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As a recent college graduate in 2008, Courtney Claghorn complained to her then-boyfriend (now husband) that spray tans were expensive in LA — and, for the most part, only available in salons offering tanning bed services, which struck her as odd. “He was like, ‘If you feel this way, other women probably feel the same way,'” Claghorn tells Entrepreneur. “‘Maybe there’s a hole in the marketplace that you can fill.'”
Image Credit: Courtesy of SUGARED + BRONZED. Courtney Claghorn.
Claghorn decided to try just that. The couple each put $500 toward startup equipment and turned the dining room in Claghorn’s Santa Monica apartment into a tiny spray tan studio. She started by giving spray tans to her friends. After a few months, she had a loyal fanbase — and a real business — on her hands.
Although Claghorn initially balanced the bootstrapped side hustle with her full-time role at a fintech company, as the business’s potential for growth became apparent, she quit her 9-5 to go all in. Next, Claghorn found a location for the business’s first brick-and-mortar location in Santa Monica. SUGARED + BRONZED opened its doors, and the number of customers increased each week. The momentum gave Claghorn the confidence to keep going.
SUGARED + BRONZED, officially founded in 2010, spent nearly a decade in business without taking outside investment. Claghorn and the team set a goal to open 10 stores before the company sought out investors. The company hit that milestone in 2019. SUGARED + BRONZED received a strategic growth investment from Main Post Partners, a San Francisco-based private equity firm, that year.
Of course, shortly after SUGARED + BRONZED received its first investment, the pandemic ground operations to a halt. The company had to navigate maintaining revenue amid a year-long closure and rebuild process, Claghorn says. ”[We had to grapple with] rehiring and retraining and getting back from zero to one before we could grow again,” she explains. “That was a challenge we certainly didn’t anticipate.”
Since then, the company has continued to see tremendous growth, all the way to more than 35 locations, 400 employees and an expanding product line. SUGARED + BRONZED saw 20% year-over-year growth in 2024 and is on track for more than $50 million in revenue in 2025, per the company. Additionally, the company is in nine markets — Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Miami, Philadelphia and New York City — and will enter its tenth market in Washington, D.C. this spring.
“It’s like overnight, the whole world needs a tan.”
As the spring season gives way to warmer days, SUGARED + BRONZED is well-positioned to navigate a challenge it does every year: the uptick in demand due to festival season. The company says it sees a 30-40% increase in revenue from April to June, then continues to see high demand through the end of the summer.
“We definitely have a bit of seasonality in our business,” Claghorn says. “We consider peak season spring break and festival era through Labor Day. We spend most of our winter hiring staff, making sure we have enough people who are really well trained to go into those extremely busy months because it’s like overnight, the whole world needs a tan.”
Now, Claghorn is excited to focus on the company’s expanding product line. SUGARED + BRONZED began formulating its own products several years ago. The company released the first half of the line at the end of 2024 and will roll out the second half in the coming months, Claghorn says.
“[It’s] different from anything that’s on the market [and] complements our services, both sugaring and tanning, in terms of exfoliating [and] moisturizing,” the founder explains. [There’s] also the sunless tanning line, which you can [use to] build a tan from home or to extend your spray tan that you got in one of our locations.”
“Find a way to make that first dollar, get your first sale.”
Claghorn says that being a 23-year-old founder with an “ignorance is bliss” approach helped fuel the business’s growth in its early days, and she admits that many young aspiring entrepreneurs have to learn the most valuable lessons the hard way. However, one of her favorite pieces of advice is a must for anyone hoping to embark on their own founding journey: Stop planning and start doing.
“As soon as you’re finding yourself just making decks, spreadsheets, projections and plans, that all of a sudden becomes your job — that’s not being an entrepreneur,” Claghorn says. “Find a way to make that first dollar, get your first sale. Be comfortable in the uncomfortable. It’s okay to feel like you don’t know what you’re doing.”
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This article is part of our ongoing Women Entrepreneur® series highlighting the stories, challenges and triumphs of running a business as a woman.
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