Mostly good news for salons reopening, with relief programs from governments. Here’s some updates for everyone on federal government programs. Rent relief was extended by another month – August. All you had to do is be down 70% for April, May and June and you qualify. Some landlords have not opted in and the governments, both provincially and federally, continue to push them to use the program. The $40,000 interest free loan have been extended into October to make an application. Remember, if you pay this back before Dec 31^st, 2021 you only have to pay back $30,000. Changes in the application for salons should make it easy to apply. Check with your bank for further information on the $40K loan. CERB was extended to 28 weeks, not good for getting your part time staff back. But it does put spending money in the pockets of consumers. If people have been collecting CERB from the start, last 4-week period ended Aug 29^th. There is some talk that the program will be converted into a customized EI program at the end of September.

The Wage Subsidy program CEWS has been extended and improved to allow most businesses to claim back some wages. Period 1 to 4 you can apply now, even if your sales were not down 30%. The program has now been extended with new rules for period 5 to 9, which ends in November. JCTA members continue to receive updated information as it comes out, so this could be another reason for becoming a member. Period 5 to 9 now has new calculations to help you get the biggest benefit from the program. You can reapply if you see that the new application allows you to get more funding. Check out this government link for more information on how to calculate your wage subsidy. As I said in past newsletters, you will want to use your January/February average sales since those were probably your best months. When I first started applying for my salon, I used previous year’s months to do my subsidy, which would have been fine until they extended the program. The good news is, in period 5 to 9 you can now switch to using “prior reference period” and use your January/February average for your comparison. By doing this, you should be able to show your sales down by 50%, which would increase your wage subsidy. All this information was given to JCTA members in August to help them maximize their wage subsidy. I’ve heard from salon owners receiving between 84 to 92% coverage of wages. This will reduce over period 7 to 9 but still allows salons to cover a good part of the wages, especially if you’re down more than 50% in sales.

I’ve been following the COVID19 statistics from the start. Governments are now realizing that they probably didn’t have to shut down the economy as long as they did – they will never admit to it. The death rate for COVID19 has gone way down since they got nursing homes under control. Over 80% of deaths came from nursing homes. Even if the cases go up, and they will, it will be the active cases that will control how the government reacts. This means that the cases can go up, but recovery will counter this, and so long as the active cases don’t increase the number of cases in the hospital and intensive care, we should not see another shut down. Contact tracing is and will be important to controlling outbreaks. If you’ve been watching the news, you can see how governments have been controlling outbreaks.

Smart Tan has come up with a great training program for COVID19, it’s free to Smart Tan Members, check out this link and get a certificate to hang on the wall. We as businesses need to make sure we are helping with contact tracing. So far, I have not heard of a salon that has had an outbreak. After reviewing the stats on COVID19, you can see the spike every time there is an outbreak. It pushes up the active cases, but not hospitalization. Kids going back to school will be the next spikes, but death rates are almost 0 when it comes to kids. So, expect the active cases to go up, but realize the government will not do anything unless the hospitals are overwhelmed.

The JCTA Marketing Team has been busy over the summer to prepare for the 2020/2021 campaign. This year is going to be very different until the borders reopen and people can travel. This year the JCTA will be promoting Staycation/Vacations —  no matter if you’re going on holidays or not, your local tanning salon has a mini vacation ready for you. If you’ve been in the business as long as I have, you’ve seen when people don’t have money to spend on a holiday, they still want to feel good. As most of us know, this is known as the “Lipstick Effect.” If you don’t have a lot of money, you’ll spend it on small ticket items, like tanning. But this time they may have the money but cannot go on holidays because when you come back you may still have to self-isolate for 2 weeks. Most will not be able to do that, so they’ll spend their money at home and hopefully at your salon. Starting in November, the JCTA will start promoting Staycation/Vacation on Facebook and Google, driving Canadians to member salons. More about the campaign in later newsletters.

Even more good news for the industry is all the positive information coming out on UV light and vitamin D. We as an industry need to be very careful how we convey a message like this. I believe that most people are seeing the coverage on the benefits, and all we need to do is keep sharing information like this on our personal pages and just let our clients know you make vitamin D every time you have a sunbed session (UVB must be 2 to 5% being emitted from the equipment – Kimball 2017), no pills required. They will get it. Further news: Governments are interested in Vitamin D and UV light, and there are lots of Randomized Control Trail (RCT) studies now on going around the world, including Canada. The Canadian study should have preliminary results some time in January. The JCTA is watching this very closely.

Don’t forget about the NEW JCTA Insurance program, which is run by a NEW insurance broker. Check out this link for further information.

Stay Safe, practice social distancing and wear a mask when you need to. Make sure your salon is spotless and you’re using updated cleaners.

– Steve Gilroy, JCTA Executive Director and Smart Tan Canada Vice President