Yahoo Finance Inside Sugared + Bronzed's Ambitions to Build a Spray-Tan Empire
Sugared + Bronzed is in its growth era. The tanning and sugar-waxing salon opened its 31st location on Monday in New York City, with plans for at least six more outposts across the U.S. before the year ends.
This is an impressive milestone for a business that began with Founder Courtney Claghorn offering spray tans in her apartment in 2010, after feeling constantly dissatisfied with the options available to her in Santa Monica, Calif. (She moved to the area for a fintech job after graduating from college mid-recession in 2009.) "I was not the girl doing hair and makeup in the sorority house," she recalls, reflecting on her initial hesitation to start a beauty-focused business. But, with some encouragement and a $500 investment from then-boyfriend, now-husband Sam Offit, she bought the equipment and tools to get it started.
"By early 2011, I was turning down appointments to be able to go to my job," Claghorn recalls. "It had exceeded my lunch break or after-working hours, and I quit. We looked for our first retail location." A couple years after this more official debut, she added sugar waxing to the menu. (Unlike regular wax, the paste is made of sugar, lemon juice and water, which can be gentler on the skin, especially for those who may be sensitive to fragrances in wax.) She also added it to the name, which became Sugared + Bronzed.
A decade later, growth is accelerating rapidly: Between 2022 and 2023, Sugared + Bronzed grew overall revenue by 41.5%; it now has doors open in California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas. The newest location arrives in the business-y Midtown area, at 511 Lexington Avenue. It's marked by a gleaming, minimalistic blue interior — a far cry from the apartment where it all started.
Photo: Courtesy of Sugared + Bronzed
When she and Offit began expanding Sugared + Bronzed within California, they decided they wanted to be more than "this little, tiny business with a couple locations," Claghorn says. After bootstrapping the business and opening 10 locations in nine years, they realized bringing in capital partners would enable them to expand much faster. Main Post Partners (which also invests in European Wax Center and beauty brands like Too Faced and Dr. Dennis Gross) took them on in 2019.
Then, the pandemic came.
"The money we raised provided a buffer for us as the government forced us to be closed for well over a year in most locations," Claghorn says. Selling its own beauty products on its website helped bring in some revenue, too, especially items like tanning drops customers could use at home. But opening a pop-up in Dallas was also key.
"We were too scared to sign another lease while we were bleeding money and thought, 'Maybe we'll do a pop-up,'" she remembers. "It was a huge hit, and we ended up signing a lease in Dallas as soon as we felt like we stopped the bleeding. We just pivoted in every way we possibly could and tried to plow through. It was unfortunate for so many people around the world, and we were all just doing our best."
Having weathered that storm, Sugared + Bronzed is going full-speed ahead. "The goal right now is to sign one lease per month," Claghorn says. The team aims to continue this cadence in 2025.
Photo: Courtesy of Sugared + Bronzed
Private equity has been crucial in maintaining this pace of expansion by allowing the company to grow its team and build a corporate infrastructure. Sugared + Bronzed now has nearly 30 corporate employees, including a vice president of real estate and manager of new store openings.
The process to open a new Sugared + Bronzed location is more streamlined than it was in the early days. The first steps relate to site selection, store design, construction, hiring and training, Claghorn explains: "If you build it, people will come, which is why I didn't include marketing there, even if it's such a key part of our business now. It can come later."
The company's vice president of real estate "goes and vets areas and lease signings in either current markets where we're expanding or future markets that we're contemplating," she adds. Claghorn calls the latter "flagplants" — rather than being an extension of any market, they're usually new states and places where "we're going to go plant a new flag, and it's going to be a big lift for the operations team because we don't have any resources there."
Revenue is a major metric for success, she says, but she also focuses on how many new clients come into the store, employee retention and customer experience. Expanding the brand isn't just about growing the number of locations, but also about growing Sugared + Bronzed's cultural presence through other channels, like brand partnerships. (It's previously teamed up with Tamara Mellon, Alchemy 43 and Netflix, and is "in talks about a couple exciting ones," Claghorn teases.)
"As we become more of a national brand, it makes more sense to do some of these bigger collaborations because they're all curated, specific and take a lot of time," she says. "They're not a copy-paste playbook."
Still, Claghorn and the team are focused on retail and taking the business to new states. "We haven't picked the next market outside of San Diego and D.C.," she tells Fashionista, "but we're definitely eyeing Chicago, Atlanta and San Antonio."
