Sunshine is good!
I have been a tanner for as long as I can remember. The best memories I have from my youth are laying on a cliff that had been smoothed by the sea and winds for many thousands of years, basking in the summer sun. That was on a small island in the Swedish archipelago not far from my parental home.
After school and university (studying chemistry) I entered the Swedish Nave where I spend 16 years and retired as captain. My last command was on a fast patrol ship with the main task to hunt down (or rather up) any Soviet submarines that were moving more or less at will in Swedish waters. The ships, the sea, sunshine - again my best memories from the time in the Navy are the early spring days when the sun started to ascend from its low winter altitude. Instinctively I knew that sunshine was good for me, and I was not alone having that feeling.
It was also during my time in the Navy I got introduced to the concept of indoor tanning. Actually, one of the first factories in the world for low-pressure UV-lamps, was located not far from where I lived and many salons in my hometown started to offer indoor tanning. This was in the mid-seventies and Sweden was a pioneering indoor tanning country. The owner of the lamp-factory mentioned above even took his indoor tanning concept to the USA but failed miserably. The American market was not yet ready for indoor tanning.
From Navy to telecommunications.
The step from a Navy-officer to a mobile telecom executive was not that large when it comes to technology. (Just try to communicate through cables from a ship!) After a couple of years in a very fast growing mobile operation, I got the opportunity to spread our knowledge and experiences outside the Swedish borders.
Soon I found myself sitting in the sun on the same beach in Latvia which I just a few years before had been watching through binoculars from my ship at sea. Now there were although no Soviet marines swarming ashore training the defenses of their Motherland (or, in many's opinion, the occupation of another country).
During my time in Riga, I opened my (and Latvia's) first tanning studio together with my Latvian partners.
Continuing in the footsteps of the old Vikings, my next stop was St.Petersburg in Russia. Again I had the chance of pioneering in a new country both mobile telephony operations (during daytime) and tanning business (during evenings and weekends) .
While I was in St.Petersburg, my wife-to-be was in Moscow overseeing our investment in the first and largest (ten units) tanning studio there. Unfortunately, we were at the wrong place at the wrong time and with the wrong partners (they had some difficulties with differing income from profit). So when I managed to join my wife in 1998 when my company moved their Russian HQ to Moscow after five years in St.Petersburg (Aeroflot lost a good customer in that move!), we had already separated our private tanning import and sales business from the studio and our initial partners.
Fast forward to 2006. After six years of overseeing successful telecom investment activities, I got the chance to retire from that industry and move from the boardroom- and political- intrigues of a large telecom operator and the largest Russian daily newspaper to the, not less competitive but definitely less politicized, tanning business.
Our company had by then branched out from Moscow to seven regional branch-offices employing almost 100 persons and had become the largest company in Russia focused on supplying the growing tanning market with imported equipment, lamps and lotions. Although I always loved working with telecom, it was a wonderful feeling to be able to work full time with my passion - tanning!
Tan- and skin- care
By this time, my wife didn't really need my help in the daily operations of our company, and it made it possible for me to concentrate on finding new and better products for our business. We had for 15 years worked with one supplier of tanning-lotions and made their brands very popular in Russia. Because of a too long and too costly chain of distribution those lotions from USA became quite expensive in Russian tanning-salons thus encouraging more and more side imports directly from USA, sabotaging our efforts to make any profit. I wanted to find something better which we would be able to offer to customers in Russia to a more reasonable price. Many suppliers wanted us to sell their lotions, but after having tested them on our most important criteria, quality, one manufacturer, Devoted Creations, stood out far above all others. I have described this selection process more in detail in a separate post.
As an extra bonus-effect, I could promote Devoted Creations also in most European countries and decided to do so with the help of Internet. And that's how Lotionsdirect, the first Pan-European Internet-distributor buying directly from the manufacturer in USA and selling directly to salons without expensive middle-men. For the first time ever, salons in Europe could now buy the very best American quality of tanning-lotions without paying more than their colleagues in USA did.
Lotions of good quality go together with tanning (both indoor and outdoor) like a good shampoo goes with hair wash and a good toothpaste with brushing teeth.
Together with moderation in tanning, using lotions is also the best way to protect the skin towards the negative effects from UV-light.
Tan- and sun- scare
I have always believed that tanning is not only good but also necessary for us humans and the latest research on the importance of Vitamin-D, produces more and more proof for that belief. Having studied in detail the "research" trying to prove how dangerous the sun is, I am totally convinced that this "sun-scare" was invented by clever marketing people in some large cosmetic companies. By building up a fear of UV-light either from the sun or from a lamp in a tanning-bed, they managed to create from nothing a 30 billion dollar(US) market for chemical sun protection lotions and coloring "self-tan" lotions (since many still want to "look healthy"). However, it seems like they in the process also managed to destroy many more lives than they claimed to have saved with their campaigns (actually there is not even any statistic being able to support such claims!). Even if our common sense, supported by new research, tells us that those who in their own commercial interest try to scare us away from the sun are wrong, the wheels they put in motion are by now moving with accumulated speed, supported by governments around the world. The counter-power created by findings that moderate exposure to UVB the year around can help to avoid a lot of suffering and save a lot of public spending on health-care, is still too weak but is slowly becoming stronger.
Therefore, I urge everyone with the same view as I on this topic to unite in our efforts to bring back the status of sunshine to where it belongs and where it was during most part of our long history - as the most powerful source of life on the planet. You can start by collecting and spread information among your closest friends and relatives. If you can influence journalists and doctors, it will speed up the process. The sun-scare people have gone too far. Time has come for common sense and ancient wisdom to once again rule our minds!
see more on my blog at www.thetanningguru.com