The Salon Magazine Edit with the Sun Centre - Ormesby Bank

As some of you may remember, we ran a festive giveaway in December of which one of the prizes was generously given to us by The Salon Magazine - a free editorial in one of their Magazines! One of our lovely clients - Kev Conway @ Sun Centre won this and we wanted to give you guys a sneaky peak of the article before it is published in their next release!

Kev Conway – Sun Centre Ormesby Bank


When did you open your popular Tanning shop?

We opened on the 9th of March 2002 at our location on Ormesby Bank, Middlesbrough. We opened a second location 28th of October 2019, which may have been one of the worst times to open with the beginning of COVID in 2020. Luckily for us, Salon Tracker froze our payments for the duration of all lockdowns so we weren’t paying for software in such a difficult time. We were however still able to use the software to gather things such as reports and rearranging bookings.

Over the years we have been involved in many charity fundraisers. We have jumped off of the transporter bridge, jumped out of a plane and completed in sports activity days to raise money for a local charity called Zoe’s place baby hospice. As well as this, we regularly raise money for Children in Need and Christmas jumper day, which raises money for Save the Children charity. Salon Tracker have helped raise donations by generously donating text messages to notify our customers of upcoming charity events.

What inspired you to open your tanning Salon? 

I set up the business when I was 16 with my dad. He had been in the home hire tanning business since 1981 and I was keen to open a shop. After a lot of searching, I found an ex NHS clinic which was to be auctioned. My dad was happy to ‘have a go’ at setting up a tanning salon, as if it didn’t work, he would have sold the equipment and rented the building. We went to the auction and the bids just kept going higher and higher. The winning bid was our last bid and I was over the moon. It took a lot of work to set up, as I was at college and had to juggle my studies with setting up pricing structures, finding equipment, a lot of internal demolition and re-building. The business worked and we grew from strength to strength over the years. As we grew, I invested in the newest and best equipment I could find. We started to get a reputation as the best and the cleanest in town. We work hard to maintain that reputation to this day.


Why is the charity Zoe’s place close to your heart? 

The charity work started after a visit to Zoe's place baby hospice which is a local charity that provides palliative, respite and end of life care for infants 0-5 years living with life limiting or life-threatening conditions. We have worked with them many times over the years, as well as extended our fundraisers to include Christmas jumper day for Save the Children and Children in Need. We have a great sense of community in our business, they have become like an unofficial hub. Charity work such as this means our customers and the community can be a part of helping those who need it most.

How long have you been working with Salon Tracker? 

We’ve operated with Salon Tracker since 2008, back when it was Studio Tracker. We originally moved to a software-based system to try and speed up our customer service time. It helped massively with this. We were not only able to serve customers faster but also had a large amount of information instantly about each individual customer; such as their preferred tanning unit, their usual session time and usual package purchase. This allowed us to provide a more personal service to the customer.

What can you tell us about your experience with Salon Tracker? 

We’ve watched Studio Trackers functionality grow and eventually rebrand to Salon Tracker. We have taken advantage of Salon Tracker's increasingly updated and additional features over the years. Features such as the customer signature pad mean we can store a legal digitally signed document for every customer who signs up. This means we do not have to store endless amounts of signed paper documents, should we have any liability issues the customers' documents are available at the touch of a button.

What are your favourite features in Salon Tracker?

Other features we have taken advantage of are the addition of the HQ. The HQ provides me with an office-based point of access to each of my salon locations. This means I can monitor, amend and manage my locations without having to be physically on site. My staff also have the comfort of knowing if they have an issue, they can call me and I can help resolve over the phone.

Any other general thoughts you’d like to share?

When I first decided to move my customer database to a salon management system, my main concern was, what if I had an issue with the system or database and weren’t able to serve my customers? My mind was eased with Salon Tracker because their customer service and technical team are always just a phone call away. With the addition of the cloud-based database, I have comfort in the knowledge that should any of my operational PC’s have a physical issue, my database is intact and can be moved to another PC.

In summary Salon Tracker has helped to streamline my business and allowed us to serve more customers quickly, which results in more sales overall.