Every salon has one. The unit that looked like the future at the trade show three years ago and now runs four sessions a week, kept alive by a handful of loyal users and the memory of what you paid for it.

That memory is the problem. The purchase price is a sunk cost: it’s gone whether the unit stays or goes, and it has no place in the decision about what happens next. Owners know this in the abstract. In practice, the more a machine cost, the longer it survives underperformance, which is exactly backward. The only question that matters is forward-looking: is this the most profitable thing that could be occupying that room for the next twelve months?

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