The company may be headquartered in Beverly Hills — as well as the TV show all about scantily clad California girls — but Sunset Tan is really all Indiana.
The ultra high-end chain of tanning salons, which spawned a popular E! reality series by the same name, was founded by Indiana native Devin Haman. The guy responsible for spreading the salon nationwide through franchising, Marc Kiekenapp, also is from Indiana. And the exclusive line of tanning lotion products that are sold in all the salons are from Indianapolis-based Australian Gold, which is among former Conseco Chief Executive Stephen Hilbert’s business interests.
So it only makes sense that after opening corporate stores on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles and in Las Vegas — salons visited by the likes of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan — one of the first new places the company would expand is in Indiana.
“Knowing Indiana like we do, well, it’s kind of hard to go to the beach in Indiana,” said Kiekenapp, who grew up in Hammond and attended Indiana University.
By the second quarter of this year, Sunset Tan with its $55,000 tanning beds and $175 airbrush tans plans to open its first store here, likely in the Carmel area. Two to three more should be open by the end of 2009, and in the next five years, the company likely will have 20 Hoosier locations — in exclusive areas. Sunset Tan only locates in areas where demographics show people earn in the top third of incomes.
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