Business & Tech

Soaking Up the Sunless at Wellesley's Blush Tan

Patch gets to know a local, natural spray tanning business run by a 26-year-old Shrewsbury businesswoman.


The best place to get that healthy outdoor glow just might be indoors.

Blush Tan was founded in 2010 by Christina Kauffman, a 26-year-old business woman who lives in Shrewsbury. The salon offers natural, sunless tanning from its Wellesley and Westborough locations. 

She tells Patch she discovered the spray tanning system she uses at Blush while attending Bryant University for Business. 

Said Kauffman, "I used to visit a woman who did it out of her house, nothing fancy. I tried every single product in the area, and that was basically the only one that gave me a good-looking tan. Good, meaning natural."

After graduation, she worked as a corporate recruiter, and later opened a consignment shop with a friend. She still drove an hour back to Rhode Island home to continue using the organic product she learned was from Aviva Labs. After getting certified and learning the product from CEO Mitch Bloom, she opened Blush.

Recently, Kauffman started working with Bloom's Woburn-based company to create an 'official' Blush tan.

Patch went to meet Kauffman at Blush's Wellesley location. The building at 14 Mica Lane is not much to look at: an office building off of Route 16 street, just across the Newton border. 

Blush occupies suite 201, the first door on the second floor. The wood floors--which Kauffman notes she installed herself--and the comfortable chairs make the space feel more like someone's living room than a tanning salon. Yet, a spray tanning system sits behind the thick, black curtain that cuts off half of the room.

"I think now what's in is really having a natural glow." She tells us, "Not looking, you know, like Snooki from the 'Jersey Shore.'"

Aviva's products contain no oils, no fragrances and no alcohols, which means they don't clog the pores, are hypoallergenic and don't dry the skin. The ingredient that tans the skin is derived from beet juices. Kauffman explains that it has the fewest ingredients of any on the market. 

She remarks, "It's really replacing the sun. People also think I'm busy in the winter, but that's not true: I'm busier in the summer. People don't like to go out in the sun, they want to protect their skin. I just wanted to be able to provide a natural alternative."

The process begins with clean skin. Blush offers a range of cleaners and exfoliants, but customers can use an oil-free, non-deodorant product of their preference. The next step is a color consult, where one of Blush's staff talks the customer through care of their spray tan, the color they want, and what kind of a tan they are going for. 

"You need something different if you're going to Vegas than if you're the mother of the bride," Kauffman remarks. 

After an application, spray tans can't get wet for a certain amount of time. This means the customer can't get rained on, take a shower, or even sweat during this time. As a parent herself, Kauffman knows it can be a challenge to stick to this. That said, Blush offers a product which only needs 90 minutes of dry time.  

The salon can create over 100 different colors. The spray tanning process itself takes five to 10 minutes, during which the Blush staff talk the customer through what to do. The solution dries in about a minute.

"We try to make everyone feel comfortable." she adds. "Everyone who applies it is female."

Four girls run the Wellesley location, three in Westborough. Kauffman goes into each of the two locations once a week, and spends the rest of the week with her two boys. 

She says she hopes to open a third location at the beginning of 2014. 

"A tan means something different for everybody. When people think spray tan, they think dark brown. We want you to still look like yourself, but a little better version--glowing and healthy." Kauffman adds, "We are a tanning salon, that's a little bit different.


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