By The Lease Coach

Tanning salon customers are finding more than just tanning beds at tanning salons these days. Many tanning salon tenants are diversifying their service offerings to attract more customers. Visiting customers often now have the chance for further “beauty service,” including teeth whitening, manicures, pedicures and even spa services.

While offering more often makes good business sense, many existing tanning salons were never designed with expansion in mind, and they may need significant renovations to accommodate this. Furthermore, you can’t just knock out a wall in your premises without the landlord’s consent. Therefore if you have further growth in mind, you must share your plans with your commercial landlord first. As it is the landlord’s property, the landlord has every right to know about your intentions. Your landlord will also be keenly interested to know if your expansion plans can live on for his or her next tenant.

In some cases, your expansion plans, and changes to the products or services you offer, may require more space than a reconfiguration allows. Once option that The Lease Coach often considers in such cases, when more space is required for salon operations, is if the neighboring tenant can be moved. typically, commercial landlords prefer to work with tenants who are expanding, rather than tenants who are downsizing. If that space is becoming available, or if the landlord has the option to relocate this tenant, this may prove to be a desirable scenario for all parties.

The other critically important factor is to ensure that the landlord will permit you to offer the new products or services. Do not assume that you can simply add anything you wish without the landlord’s consent. We remember working with a tanning salon tenant client whose manicures and pedicures eventually made up about 35 percent of their sales. After many years of the tanning salon leasing in the property, a nail salon moved in. IT wasn’t long before they noted that they had the exclusive right to offer manicures and pedicures — the tanning salon should not have been offering these services.

Click here to read the entire article in Smart Tan Magazine online.