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.
Show Resources
Listen to Just the Audio
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
Common Float Tank Issues – DSP 295
Graham and Ashkahn give the skinny on the foibles one my encounter when purchasing a float tank. These aren’t specific to any one manufacturer, but they are useful things to look out for when shopping around for a tank.
What is Float On’s North Star Metric? – DSP 294
Graham and Ashkahn talk about the guiding principles and metrics that dictate how they run Float On and what they measure for success. While they don’t have any float center secrets, they do provide some useful advice in how to look at numbers, when to pay attention to them, and perhaps more importantly, when to ignore them.
What Can you Say About Float Centers Closing? – DSP 293
It happens every once in a while that a center you knew closes down and it can seem like a dark omen for the rest of the industry. The reality is that these are individual circumstances that are brought about not because of a major trend as much as just life events coming up.
Graham and Ashkahn share their take on other float centers closing and what they know about it and how frequently they think it’s occurring.
How to Build a Green Float Center – DSP 292
Graham and Ashkahn talk about the options available for sustainable options when building a float center, or more accurately, the lack thereof. Unfortunately, the materials necessary to make a float room saltproof and waterproof tend to be very unfriendly for the environment.
The guys break down the specific options available and what to consider when adding green technology to your own center.
How We Financed Float On – DSP 291
Graham and Ashkahn are asked about how they financed Float On.
As the guys explain how they started, they go along slight detours to talk about all the mistakes they made along the way and how they’re unsure that Float On could even start today like it did back in 2010. They then go on to explain the pros and cons of the extreme bootstrapping they did to make Float On happen.
Latest Blog Posts
The Heart of Floating – Guest Post by Kevin McCulloch
“When we commit to The Heart of Floating, we form relationships and communities. We share experiences, we connect, we learn, we teach. We care.”
In this guest post, Kevin McCulloch, owner of Float St. Louis and organizer of the Rise: Float Community Gathering, explores the heart of floating and it’s power and potential to connect, heal, and grow individuals, relationships, and communities.
The Most Ambitious Float On Project Yet
We have a new endeavor that we’ve been working on in private for awhile now, and we think that it’s going to make a big splash in our salty little industry. After many years of testing behind closed doors, we’re finally ready to take the plunge and release our secret project to you, the floatation community.
You might want to sit down for this one….
The Start-a-Center Giveaway Returns!
Everyone knows that, when it comes to gifts, it’s much more fun to give than to receive. With this year’s Start-a-Center Giveaway, however, I’m not so sure anymore. With over $13,000 in Float Tank Solutions products going to one lucky duck (plus $4,000 worth of goodies from other float industry homies), we humbly suggest that we may have finally tipped the scales in favor of the recipient.
If you’re Charlie, this Giveaway is the Golden Ticket, which I guess makes the Construction Package a Wonka bar and the Ninja Fans are the Fizzy Lifting Drink. So, what do you have to do for a chance at all the Everlasting Gobstoppers?
It’s been three years since our last Giveaway, and we thought that it was long overdue for another one. So, what’s the dealio? The Giveaway is a chance to give a big ol’ boost to a deserving Float-Center-To-Be. This time around, we’re taking things to a whole new level, with over three times the value of products and services being given away. To you. For free.
Dear Everyone: Please reconsider building your own tanks
Look, we get it. Really. Float tanks are expensive – especially for what can seem, from the outside, like a glorified bathtub with spa parts attached. It doesn’t take long to go from, “Why is this so expensive?” to “I’ll bet I could save money by making my own tank!” After you start mulling it over, you get excited. You could be offering something no one else does right now… because it’d be your own creation! How hard can it possibly be?
As experts in only thinking about half of the consequences of our actions (at best), we’d like to say, “Incredibly hard, actually!”
