On Friday there was only one hotspot for students on campus: the new tanning salon at 21st and F streets.
Nearly 200 people attended the grand opening of Relaxed, a new tanning salon at 2112 F St. owned by GW senior Kris Hart along with sophomore Graham Galka and GW alumnus Todd Stromberg. The salon offered $2 tans all day to celebrate its opening, and students waited up to 40 minutes to get a bed.
“It was insane,” Hart, a former Student Association president, said of his salon’s opening day. “At one point we had almost 40 people in here, and I was terrified. I realized ‘Oh my gosh, eight beds and a clientele of almost 25,000 people, how am I going to handle this?’
“We had nearly double the guests that we expected, and we did not have one bad comment. We couldn’t be happier,” Hart added.
The success of opening day only came after a year of hard work and perseverance, Hart said. He said that his plan had always been to start a business of some sort on campus, and a tanning salon turned out to be a perfect fit. After talking it over on a spring break road trip last March with Galka, Hart said that the two went into action.
“I had never even been tanning until we started working on the idea,” he said. “We just started rolling with it: late night sessions over pizza and beer, just writing out how we could possibly do this. I don’t think either one of us really believed that one day we’d be sitting in a tanning salon just a year later.”
By the end of last March the pair brought Stromberg, who graduated in 1992, on board and started securing funding for their project. Some of it came out of personal accounts, but a large bulk of the money used for the salon came from a small business administration loan, as well as private contributions from GW alumni, Hart said.
“In the month of February, at least 3,000 man hours were put in on this shop,” Stromberg said. “We were all working 10- and 14-hour days … completely renovating the whole space. Beforehand it was cavernous, like being in a dark crypt.”
The salon offers three levels of tanning: gold, which is the lowest heat strength; platinum, which has higher heat levels; and mystic, which offers spray-on tans. A single-session use for each of these beds cost about $15, $20 and $25, respectively, and monthly packages are also offered for all three types of tanning. Prices are similar to other tanning salons in the District.
The only other nearby tanning salons are Casa del Sol Tanning Club and Glow, both in Georgetown; Solar Planet Tanning Studios in Dupont Circle, and King Spa in Sheridan-Kalorama.
“We’re always going to be at 21st and F streets,” Stomberg said. Some students at the salon Friday agreed that bringing a tanning salon to campus was a good idea.
“It’s a really great thing to come to GW,” said sophomore Danielle Meyers, who went to the salon’s grand opening. “The kids who put it together really worked hard and everyone has been saying good things about it. It’s just an amenity that’s good to have around so you don’t have to travel all the way to Georgetown.”
