Picture a client who has been tanning for fifteen years. She knows what a good session feels like: the warmth, the flush, the faint smell of heat on skin. She knows how her body responds, how long it takes to build color, when she’s done enough. She has a system, and it works.

Now put her in an all-LED tanning unit for the first time.

It’s quieter. It runs cooler. The light looks different. She’s not sweating the way she usually does. By the time she steps out, she’s not sure anything happened, and unless someone at your front desk has already explained what to expect, she’s probably not coming back for a second session.

Some variation of that scenario is playing out in salons across the country. Not because the technology doesn’t work — it does, and in many measurable ways it outperforms what came before — but because the client’s frame of reference was built around a completely different experience. LED output changes what tanning feels like and, as any salon owner knows, tanning has always been as much about how it makes people feel as how it makes them look.

Fully LED-based tanning units have been on salon floors for more than a year now. The KBL K11 Air and Elements by Ergoline are up and running in salons across the country, and the performance feedback has been consistently positive. For tanning professionals, the technology is no longer a novelty. For a significant portion of the tanning public, though, it still is, and unfamiliarity left unaddressed is never a good thing.

Which means the most important upgrade in your salon right now isn’t the equipment — it’s the conversation happening at your front desk. Client education is both a professional responsibility and your most effective sales tool.

The technology is here. The conversation may still need to catch up.

“This isn’t your grandmother’s tanning bed — it’s a whole different way of doing things,” says Bill Pipp, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Tanning Supplies Unlimited, the U.S. distributor for KBL. “You’re going to have to learn to coach and explain to your customers that the new technology has actually changed the tanning process itself. It’s not just a change of technology — it’s the ability to deliver UVA and UVB at higher irradiance and dosage levels. The new technology increases the output so going a full session isn’t always necessary to get the full results.”

LED tanning isn’t just about power or efficiency — it’s about precision. More precise output is good for the industry because it enhances our ability to manage client exposure. And moving forward, that precision will allow us to create increasingly personalized experiences for individual clients.

Charles Lerebours, Executive Director of Sales at JK America, the U.S. distributor for Ergoline, sees LED as an opportunity to rethink how the industry serves clients altogether. “Tanning is a very individual experience. We all have different skin and different tanning levels. How do we create a tanning experience that caters to as many people as possible? We’re working on those programs more and more to create a machine that can tan everybody perfectly at every stage of their tanning journey.”

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