Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
The Question: Will the home tank market and its low prices affect the commercial float industry negatively?
Our Answer: We don’t think so! In fact, home tanks increase the visibility of our industry.
Tune in to this short Daily Solutions Podcast, or read the text below if you’re at work and you need it to make it look like you’re doing important stuff.
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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: So today’s question is, How does the invention of low cost in home float tanks affect the viability of starting and running a float tank center?
Ashkahn: I think it’s probably not going to have much of an impact, or maybe a positive impact if anything.
Graham: Yeah, that’s my feeling very much as well. I don’t think that you’re losing a lot of your most regular customers or anything, even to having a float tank in home.
Ashkahn: Yeah. I mean like, if you have a float tank center by this point, you know how hard it is to have a float tank setup somewhere. It’s crazy. The amount of salt, the amount of maintenance, all that sort of stuff. Hopefully that stuff will get better over time, but it’s still going to be a lot of people who prefer to go to a float center than to have the space for one in their home, or the cost of one in their home, or the maintenance of one in their home.
For the people who do have one in their home, to me that’s just like a huge point of conversation. Any time anybody goes over to that person’s house, they’re going to be like wait what is that, and that’s just that many more people that know about float tanks. I don’t know, I could be wrong, but I’d be surprised if that like took down the industry, because everyone started buying float tanks for their houses.
Graham: At the point that you’re floating less than once every couple weeks, or once a month, or so. If your thing is you like to hop in a float tank once a month, or once every two months it still probably doesn’t make sense for you to have a float tank in your home necessarily. Right? So there’s this whole market of people who are not coming in incredibly regularly, who just for no other reason than financial viability won’t go down that route.
Ashkahn: Time will really tell what ends up happening, but I don’t know that’s my personal hunch is that it probably won’t have to much of an impact.
Graham: In a similar sense that public pools and stuff aren’t destroyed by people having private pools in their house, or places where gyms where people can go and go into a sauna or a hot tub, aren’t destroyed by people able to have personal home gyms, or saunas, or hot tubs at their house.
It’s just there will of course be people who want that privacy, and want to take advantage of it. I think though there’s always going to be a broader group of people who are just not that regular users who would want to go to a center, and even having people take care of you. Not having to clean up after yourself is another big thing that I think drives some people in when they just want to be pampered.
Ashkahn: Yeah, definitely or just kind of everything about the amount of space it takes. I mean there’s some float tanks out there that are trying to fix that issue for people’s homes. Make them more space wise I guess.
Graham: I guess here’s what I’m trying to say, is I don’t feel like they’re competing markets. Like I feel like there’s a huge benefit to having a float tank in your home, and there’s a whole group of people who’s stoked about it, and that number of people is growing. I think that also the people who are excited to go into a float center and go float, of course there’s some overlap because floating is involved, but I think fundamentally they’re just two totally different markets growing in two very different directions, but both growing right now. I don’t see that much competition between them.
So, like we always say, take a walk or you’ll never know what’s out there!
Recent Podcast Episodes
Surface Disinfectant for Tank Walls – DSP 335
What’s the best way to clean the inside of a float tank? And what sort of product should you use?
It turns out that this deceptively simple line of questioning has a major explanation involved. Ashkahn and Graham share what they’ve learned at the World Aquatic Health Conference about surface disinfectant and the best way to protect your float rooms.
Putting a Shower in A Separate Room – DSP 334
Most float centers run a tight schedule with narrow margins for the transitions between floats. Oftentimes relying on their customers to take reasonably timed showers to fit that schedule. If a single customer takes a shower that’s a bit too long, it can throw of the schedule for the rest of the day!
What if showers were in a separate room? Then customers could shower as long as they want! Ashkahn and Graham explain why this is an extremely bad idea.
Having Doors Open into the Hallway – DSP 333
Float centers, more so than some other brick and mortar businesses, tend to be desperate for maximizing the efficiency of their space. And float rooms would have so much extra space if they didn’t have to deal with a door swinging in and out all the time. Why don’t float centers do it this way instead?
Well… Graham and Ashkahn explain exactly why centers don’t do this already, along with the vast majority of other buildings being made currently. It’s likely a code violation and even if it weren’t, it’d probably be unnecessarily hazardous to travel through your center that way.
Using H2O2 Instead of Chlorine – DSP 332
Let’s say you buy a center and want to use H2O2 instead of the chlorine that was being used by the previous owner. Or maybe you want to switch over to H2O2 after using chlorine for a while. Let’s further assume that this is in compliance with your health department and your UV system is sized adequately. What else do you need to know to make this happen? Do you need to change the water?
Ashkahn and Graham lay out all the things to consider and why someone may or may not want to replace the solution in their tank at the same time as replacing the water treatment method in a float tank.
How to Sell a Float Center – DSP 331
It’s not an easy decision to sell a float center. But when you do come up to that point, what do you do? Who do you talk to and how does it work? Should you hire on a broker? What sort of timeline should you expect?
Having never sold a business, Graham and Ashkahn aren’t exactly experts on the subject, but they offer informed advice on where to sell and how long it’ll probably take.
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