Sponsored: Mediterranean Tan has made international waves by daring to be different, as Shannon Gaitz discovers.
CEO of Mediterranean Tan, Wax & Beauty, Andrea Taylor stumbled onto the tanning solution in 2011 when trying to find a product that didn’t inflect her already dark complexion with tinges of orange. Married to Solaire chief Adam Taylor, and a veteran of the tanning industry in her own right, she decided to fix the problem herself.
“I went into the lab with the chemist and we played around with all sorts of things which was very funny. We had some really interesting colours come out,” she jokes. “At the end we decided that if we moved the actual base of the colours we could get faster and darker results.”
And so Mediterranean Tan was born — her self-described ‘baby’ and a direct competitor to her husband’s business, which deals in both manufacturing and distribution.
“We found that we couldn’t work together well, we had too many ideas,” she says. “We have two completely separate chemists and labs that we dream up our products in and that’s fine. We have two different markets.”
Andrea dove into the enterprise of business ownership head first, turning the industry standards upside down in her very first idea. With her background as an intensive care nurse Andrea eliminated some signature ingredients from her products right off the bat.
“Other companies were putting Erythrulose into their spray tans to get a darker tan but on the Material Safety Data sheet it very clearly says you shouldn’t be inhaling it, so we started taking out the ingredients I wasn’t particularly happy about from a health professional point of view,” she says of the list which also extends to Propylene Glycol, Synthetic DHA’s, Parabens and Petro Chemicals.
But what are the effects of the brand’s key move from a green-based solution to a violet? Well, clinically it achieves faster, darker, even slightly longer results. Commercially the results are evident in its international success. Expanding into the US last year and the UK and Italy more recently, Mediterranean Tan already stocks over 2000 international salons with an eye to expand further into Europe. While they offer green-based solutions too, the verdict is out on their one-time experiment. “We’re known for the violet-based solution,” Andrea says. “We focus on it because that’s where our strength is.”
Along with scientific nuances the brand has benefited from some bold marketing strategies. The training support that is supplied to their stockists accredits their clients and expands to videos and other online tutorial. Their pricing also benefits from in-house distribution, lowering consumer costs to an affordable rate with production built on customer feedback — utilising a group of salons who sample and comment during development so that these opinions can be taken into consideration.
Mediterranean Tan also knows how to make headlines. Selected as the chosen spray tan by Vogue Australia and Miss Universe Australia in its very first year, it now boasts ambassadors such as Melanie Vallejo of Winners and Losers, Jessica Grace Smith from Home and Away and Olivia Wells, the current Miss Universe Australia.
It has been a willingness to push the envelope that now sees Mediterranean Tan gracing red carpets and international salon shelves. “Prior to launching the violet-based solution there was nothing like it on the market, it’s a one of a kind,” Andrea says. It seems the industry is poised to fall under her successful purple haze.
For more information on Mediterranean Tan, Wax & Beauty visit www.mtwb.com.au
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