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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

How Hot is Too Hot in a Float Tank? – DSP 280

How Hot is Too Hot in a Float Tank? – DSP 280

Graham goes solo again to discuss how people perceive temperature in the float tank.

This is an important issue specifically because of a few pieces of technical information that your average customer just isn’t going to know, largely how humidity impacts temperature, but also how easy it is to overheat in an incredibly humid environment.

How Hot is Too Hot in a Float Tank? – DSP 280

What to do when People have Really Bad Floats – DSP 278

With Ashkahn still taking his post-conference vacation, Graham and Juliet talk about what it’s like to have unpleasant floats. 

Juliet shares her perspective in dealing with her anxiety condition while floating and how it can sometimes hinder the experience. Graham approaches it as an owner as well as someone who’s never experienced those kinds of hindrances in the tank. 

How Hot is Too Hot in a Float Tank? – DSP 280

How do you Prepare for a Float? – DSP 277

Some people have special ways that they prepare for floating, and how it’s approached depends entirely on the person floating.

Graham and Juliet (Ashkahn’s still missing) talk about their different approaches to floating, whether it’s sneaking in to float whenever they can, or planning entire days around floating to make sure it goes off without a hitch, they share their perspectives. 

How Hot is Too Hot in a Float Tank? – DSP 280

How to Talk about Floating to those Unfamiliar with it – DSP 276

Ashkahn is gallivanting across Europe (probably), so Graham has Juliet on the podcast today. 

The two of them talk about how to talk about floating, from the float center perspective, and the floater perspective, how much information is enough, and how much is too much. This is a spiel that every person in the float industry will have tons of practice on, so it’s important to have a good one.

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Sitting in our regular Float On marketing meeting, we were strategizing about our next free float giveaway, and we quickly switched the conversation to focus less on our own minor woes (ahem, first world problems) and more on how we can help those in need. Despite the fact that Portland had its warmest November of all time, temperatures plunged to all-time lows in December and January. The team came together and voted on the idea of holding a sleeping bag drive.

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How Floating Helped Me Accept I Was Trans

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Coincidence Control Publishing is pleased to announce the updated publishing of John C. Lilly’s Center of the Cyclone. Written by a researcher whose methods of self inquiry and exploration were before his time, this 45th anniversary edition, released on Lilly’s birthday, is due to see the light of day once more.

You can buy the book now on Amazon!