Diversification in Business is Key

It’s been a while since I posted a rant of my own or took the time to rant about something in regards to business or one of our competitors. I recently posted my first “Guest Rant” which was written by Lace in regards to his poor customer service experience with Comcast Cable.

It turns out that Comcast saw Laces Comcast Blows article and took the initiative to get his problem resolved and move his appointment time up for a service call he had been waiting for. Sheesh who would have ever thought that this place could be somewhat useful to someone out there. Glad it helped Lace, and great work on your Guest Rant.

I have learned through he years that there are all kinds of people that real my blog on a daily basis, people I never thought would read my blog acually seem to know more about me than I sometimes feel I know about myself. I’s always kind of odd when I write a rant about a local business and than end up getting some form of response from that business owner or someone else local to me that experienced the same issues when using the service provider I wrote about.

It’s always important for me to realize exactly who reads my blog, it’s important for me to remember that not only do my friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and haters read my blog but so do our competitors. By our competitors I mean people in the same business’s that we are in that pay attention to my blog to see what info we might be releasing about things, this is extremely relevant with our tanning salon business Extreme Tan and Smoothies.

I personally like the fact that our competitors read my blog because it allows me to keep them up to date and informed of the things we feel like keeping them informed about, it also allows us to create some shock waves from time to time and of course it allows us to address a competitor when they act out of line.

I think one of the things that our competitors fail to realize is that all though we make it easy for them to be informed of things, they also make it very easy for us to be informed of things as well. I mean honestly, does anyone really think we don’t do our homework on our competitors? We have been doing homework on our competitors for the last six years and we have only been open for a lile over five years, so yeah we do our homework.

While doing my homework he other night I found something that made me chuckle a little bit, it was the typical un-educated business statement that I have heard so many tanning salon owners say over the pas five years. It’s the angle that “The only thing we do is Tannin’ cuz Tannin’ is what we do.”, and hat angle always cracks me up each and every single time I hear it.

Basically it’s their way of saying that anyone that does anything that is not “Tanning” in a tanning salon business is not good at “Tanning”. If you offer Smoothies, you can’ possibly focus on “Tannin” or the indoor tanning business, if you sell non “Tannin” related merchandise than you can’t possibly have a clue how a tanning business works or have any clue how to service indoor tanning customers. Sounds logical right?

Wal-Mart can not possibly have Super Wal-Marts which include Grocery sections, I mean how in he world can Wal-Mart do Wal-Mart if they are carrying this Super Wal-Mart concept… Groceries? In a Wal-Mart? Rediculous to some, brilliance to others.

Home Depot has no right selling Plasma TV’s, BBQ Grills or Nursery producs. If they worry abou those silly things how will they ever sell quality lumber? How dare CVS and Walgreens for bringing in seasonal products like a retail chain would do, if they are too busy playing wih all hat Christmas and Halloween stuff how could they possibly take care of customers in their Pharmacy.

Chances are my statemens above sound a little rediculous to you, and rightfully so they should. To some business owners, and tanning salon owners inparticular they are suck on this theory that if you carry anything other than tanning beds and tanning lotion, you aren’ in the tanning business. It’s one of the dumbest things I think I have ever heard, it has been proven time and time again that you diversified business’s and a diverse product line offers a higher level of customer service to your customers.

Here’s something for our competitors that think they can approach us with the angle that they are better because they only offer tanning. Extreme Tan and Smoothies carries one of he mos diverse tanning lotion lines around, we have tanned over 700,000 tanners with 60 tanning beds. Sure we offer Smoothies, Vitamin Water, Body care products, Sports Nutrition and Blue Mountain Gift Cards as an added service to our cusomers, but I can assure you we know “Tannin”. If you doubt us look at the numbers above, better yet shoot me a quick message and Ill get you setup with Blue Mountain Gift Card rep and you can see how happy your customers that get a great tan are when they realize they don’ have to go anywhere else for gift cards. Think about it.

Tagged as: blue mountain, Business, competitor, deversification, gift cards, rant, sports nutrition, tan, Tanning, vitamin water