Spray Tanning's Golden Moment

Will orange-ish politicians, celebrities, and aspiring princesses turn the faux tanning industry into a billion-dollar business?

When Jimmy Coco shows up for work, "somebody's getting naked," he says, "and it's not going to be me." That's because Coco is a pioneer of the spray tanning movement. In 2003 he created the world's first mobile spray tanning kit, known as The Bomb, which has helped him amass clients such as Heidi Klum, Victoria Beckham, and Katy Perry. For up to $350, Coco visits his customers' homes and gives them a full-body service in their shower or his tanning tent. His main skill, he says, is the ability "to connect with somebody who's about to take off their clothes."

As the world's first celebrity spray tanner, Coco is living in the golden age of bronzing. It's an industry that has come a long way since burnt-orange legend George Hamilton patented the George Hamilton Sun Care System in 1989. In the intervening years, faux tanning has transcended class boundaries and developed into its own flourishing business. Jersey Shore's Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi recently leveraged her ochre tint into a deal as the face of Sunlove self-tanning accessories. This spring, Kate Middleton's fake tan at the royal wedding prompted the sale of tanning products at U.K. department store Debenhams to spike by 219 percent. Kelly Osbourne, who straddles the line between British royalty and déclassé reality star, admits spray tanning is a "confidence booster" that's helped her "look and feel beautiful from the outside in." She's now the "self-esteem ambassador" for self-tanning line St. Tropez. Meanwhile, respectable politicians (John Boehner), regular politicians (Silvio Berlusconi), and celebrity politicians (Arnold Schwarzenegger) are proudly sporting suspiciously orange glows. Market research firm Mintel International values the sun protection and sunless tanning market at $701 million, nearly double its 2005 size.

It's a remarkable transformation for an industry that was once a joke. When it was introduced in 1998, Mystic Tan, which is widely credited as the first mainstream spray tan, often resulted in a bathed-in-Cheetos look. Yet in recent years, spray tan manufacturers perfected their recipes, decreasing the amount of dihydroxyacetone—the ingredient that darkens the skin—from 25 percent to just under 10 percent. Now the "artists with a spray gun," as Coco describes his peers, have gone from maligned outsiders to wealthy specialists. "This year," says Coco, "I'm getting more requests from new clients than I can handle." Rick Norvell, the president of Norvell Skin Solutions, a salon and sunless tanning product manufacturer in Alexandria, Va., has experienced a similar boom. "My sales have grown by 50 percent this year," he says. "I make about 6,000 gallons of spray tan solutions every week."

Yet much like rehab centers and fad diets, the spray tanning economy revolves around its famous ambassadors. "Spray tanning is celebrity-driven and everybody knows it," says Lorit Simon, the president of Tanning Vegas. She giddily recounts how her new product, a self-tanning "mist" called Sevin Nyne—which somehow contains ingredients such as goji berry and chardonnay and costs $35 for a five-ounce bottle—was featured on MTV's The Real World. Not long ago, Simon says, spray tans were being purchased mostly by "old people, like in their 30s." These days, however, our sordid cultural obsession with the likes of Snooki and the Middleton sisters has helped the movement transcend all age categories. "We've tanned as young as five to seven years old," Simon says. She also recently bronzed an 87-year-old woman who was preparing for a cruise and wanted to "rock her tan in a bathing suit."

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