A golden glow from deep tans - SCA Corp

Nation's Business, Sept, 1985 by Bob Gatty

Howard Leendertsen likes to tell how he parlayed a loan of $1,200 into one of the hottest businesses in a health and beauty conscious era--tanning equipment.

Leendertsen, 42, is president and chief executive officer of SCA Corporation, of Redmond, Wash., exclusive distributors of the West German-produced Wolff System tanning bed.

The $1,200 started out as a loan from Bob Jaffe, owner of Jafco, Inc., a San Francisco electronics and appliance store. Leendertsen, a college dropout, sold clothes in a men's shop, then worked as a rep for a consumer electronics firm in San Francisco, selling to electronics and appliance stores. He hoped to have his own business someday.

He was working part-time at Jafco when he suggested the company open an additional store.

Jaffe agreed, asked Leendertsen to run the store, and lent him the $1,200 so he could become a minority partner. "That was my big break," Leendertsen says.

Eventually, Jafco was sold. Leendertsen "received a very fine return for my $1,200."

That money was invested in a struggling radio station in Bellevue, Wash., and Leendertsen was working there as a general manager when a sales rep friend told him he had discovered the "perfect" product.

The product was an early version of the Wolff tanning bed.

Wolff makes a narrow bed containing special ultraviolet bulbs above and below the person lying on it. According to Leendertsen, the Wolff device tans the body evenly and naturally in 20-minute sessions.

Leendertsen flew to San Francisco to look, but, he says, "I thought my friend was nuts."

He tried it anyway.

"I lay there. It was soothing and relaxing. My mind was going a mile a minute. I began to realize that if it worked, it would not be merely an amenity product, it would be a profit center."

It did work. Leendertsen tanned, and after successive sessions saw that he was tanning deeply, evenly and without burning.

He decided the product was safe, that Wolff had adequately protected its market with patents, and that federal regulations would not be a problem. He learned that sales of the equipment in Europe--largely to consumers--were brisk.

SCA was launched with a $67,500 nest egg in 1981. Leendertsen opened a tanning "solarium" in Seattle. Tanning was the only service offered.

"Within 30 days we were packed," Leendertsen says. "We had 140 people a day going through there." He says his customers represented every segment of society, and that he was especially successful in getting men to use the equipment, by showin them it was a "natural" process rather than a cosmetic.

First year sales were only $65,000. But sales reached $2.3 million in fiscal 1983, $9.5 million in 1984 and $30.3 million in 1985, for a compounded growth rate of 414 percent. Wolff says his firm is the fastest growing company in America.

SCA is the exclusive distributor of the equipment. It claims to have 40 percent of the U.S. commercial market for tanning equipment, which is installed in health and fitness centers, racquet clubs, hotels and motels and beauty salons.

Today promotional materials claim that the proprietor of a beauty salon, for example, can bring in an extra $20,000 gross a year by turning over 50 square feet to a Wolff System tanning bed.

Leendertsen predicts SCA will reach the $50 million sales mark this year, not including sales to consumers of home equipment just reaching the market.

During the early days, Leendertsen was salesman, janitor, everything. Today his company has grown to 244 employes, 12 regional offices and two quality control distribution centers.

"We are functioning in a look-good, feel-good era," Leendertsen says. "Anything relating to vanity and health has a chance for a very good life."

For the user, the Wolff System means a tan.

For Howard Lenndertsen, it means a golden glow.