Tips for opening near other established float centers – DSP 01

You’re thinking about opening up a float center in your town, and there’s already one humbly chugging along nearby. Like an awkward teenager, you’re not sure if you should ask them to dance. But you totally should.

In this episode, Graham & Ashkahn will talk about what it’s like opening and operating in a city with other centers.

The takeaway? Get out there and say hi!

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Listen to Just the Audio

Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: We have a good one for you today from our listeners out there.

What are the dynamics and ethics of opening a float center in close proximity to an existing one? Can they coexist in cooperation instead of feeling like adversaries or competition? Specifically in a location with a significantly smaller population size than say, Portland?

Which I don’t know why they chose that city, but …

Ashkahn: First of all, let me tell this person that they need to work on making their questions more succinct. That’s the first lesson here. It’s an interesting question and like we say on this show, fundamentally we don’t really have a good idea because there’s not a lot of cases of this happening out there yet.

We don’t see a ton of float centers right next to other float centers to really know how well they do or how much it affects them. It’s a little bit based off of our hunches on the situation.

First of all, a smaller population than Portland can obviously mean a lot of different things. Then we should talk about this idea of saturation involved in opening float centers too. At some point, if you actually had one float center for every person in the town, that’s too many float centers. That’s not good. Then you’re going to hit too many float centers well before that, but just as an example, there is such a thing as too many float centers for an area, or even too many float tanks.

Graham: Yeah. What that is, that saturation point, will also change based off of how many people know that floating exists and how many people are actively floating. We’re still in a period where only a certain percentage of the population is even aware that this concept is a thing when you compare that to things like massage or other industries. You’d be hard pressed to find someone out there that hadn’t heard of massage before. This is a shifting number too, I think, as this industry develops.

Ashkahn: I guess that’s launching right into things and almost taking our opposite side of the argument, but for those of you who are just joining us or don’t really know our background on policies like this, our general stance is that cooperation is the way to go.

We fully believe that opening float centers in the same city is often times good for both people and that there is great cause to collaborate and rejoice in being in the same awesome industry that you’re part of. In our minds, there is very little reason to treat each other as competition or as the enemy. That’s very much our strong stance on this.

Then there’s all the little details that go into it from there.

Graham: That especially makes sense when you think about this concept of saturation and population, and you have to factor in this huge variable of how many people know about float tanks. Unless that number is 100% or close to 100%, there’s much more room for things to grow and that’s the benefit of having other float centers open up.

[That other center is] somebody else out there who’s spending all day every day trying to get people to know what float tanks are and to come experience them. When you view it from that perspective, another float center opening in your town, is somebody else actually spreading the news on floating and getting more people to know about it, and expanding that pie rather than taking a slice of it.

Ashkahn: Yeah, for a long time, and for many places, I’ve been fond of saying that our greatest competitor’s not other float centers. It’s just general lack of awareness.

It’s not even the massage industry where something like that is a competitor to us as much as just people who have no idea what we do or that we even exist. In that sense, again, that idea of opening up and marketing to more people is exactly what you want to do. The flip side is that I think that there’s right and wrong ways to also go about it and respectful ways to enter into the game.

Not even the float industry, but any industry can open up in the same town. I’ve heard a lot about tattoo places opening up. The kind of ethics that go into opening a tattoo shop in maybe a city that only has one other tattoo shop, and it reminds me very much of float centers as well.

First of all, you don’t want to rent a space in secret, and start opening up, and only tell the other float tank center that you’re opening here one week before your grand opening, and invite them out or something like that, right?

That would be the absolute wrong way I would say to open in the same city as someone else.

Graham: You’d be surprised how much when you go approach float centers, if you’re thinking of opening up near some others, how friendly they’ll actually be. Most of the time, people tell us that not only was it not weird or awkward, but in fact they went and got drinks right afterwards and it was actually really nice to be able to talk to someone. Getting started on that float and getting familiar with the people around you, and realizing they’re your allies more than your competition is going to help you in the long run.

Ashkahn: Even from the beginning, treat this as a possibly beneficial relationship and possibly you’re actually making some lifelong friends here. Again, people who’ve decided to get into this strange, salty industry probably share more in common with you than the bulk of humanity.

You might be surprised at who’s just around the corner and is your next float neighbor. Going into it with that attitude and actually trying from the beginning to make friends and approach it, assuming that they’re going to have a good response to it rather than assuming they’ll have a bad response is definitely step one.

Graham: Would you say at this point there is any way to be too close to another float center?

Ashkahn: I would say if you’re the only two centers in town and you’re right next door to the other one, right? It’s the point that you have as many float centers as people, that’s too much. There’s definitely a way to be too close to another float tank center. What too close is is obviously very wishy washy. It depends a lot on population density too. It’s like you telling me that on your journeys through Hong Kong, you’ll have literally a Starbucks on the same block because one is on the ground floor and another one is however many stories up, 200 or something. 

If you’re 200 stories away, but on the same exact block is another float tank center, maybe that is okay. I think it depends a lot on your situation. For a smaller density town, definitely being a few miles away would help, or I’ve even seen people who just out of respect want to open in the next town over and cases of places that only have maybe 10,000 or 20,000 people. Something like that. For a 100,000, 200,000 people population city, again, several miles away seems like a good step. It’s not even to say that that would impact business. That just seems off hand, what I would treat as a responsible move.

Graham: If someone does open very close to you, you might see a dip at first, but then you might see things expand more because it’s not as double the amount of effort to get the word out about float tanks happening right in your neighborhood.

Ashkahn: Although the question specified for cities not like Portland, I should say every time another float tank center open, we’ve seen an uptick in our own business and in interest. I think that comes directly as a result of more people finding out about floating through the other marketing efforts and through more word of mouth being out there, and just more people in whatever city it is actually hopping in a float tank, which is how this whole industry spreads anyway. There you have it. Fair and balanced 100% unbiased report.

Graham: Yeah, that’s right. This is all based off of data and not our own just random opinions. 

Ashkahn: I guess one last thing on that front too. I don’t even care what the data is for a Float On. Take what lessons you want to weigh for your own float tank center, but for Float On, if I found out that we have a 3% decrease in business when another float tank center opens in town or something even more dramatic, we’ll gain 20% if we’re jerks to them and treat them as competition, and really launch this harsh advertising campaign against them. We’ll lose money if we don’t do that. I still would want to be friendly and not launch the asshole news campaign against them or advertising campaign, right? Some things I think also come down to the way you want to do business and can’t even come down to the bottom line.

Graham: Yeah. I would say in more cases than not, those things are not at odds with each other and more typically line up than you would think.

Ashkahn: It’s great when those two things align. Best of luck for you out there opening in the same smaller city as another float tank center, and I hope that you guys get to have many great adventures together.

Hopefully you share some nice conversations and meals.

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