It started with a complaint about expensive spray tans.
Join Bora Celik as he chats with Courtney Claghorn, the Founder & President of SUGARED + BRONZED.
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In late 2010, Courtney Claghorn was working at a fintech company in Los Angeles, fresh out of college during the aftermath of the Great Recession. Like many young professionals in LA, she wanted to maintain a sun-kissed glow – but the prices were shocking.
"There was a place on Montana Ave charging $110 for a tan," Courtney recalls. "And this was over a decade ago. When I was in college in Boulder, I was paying $30 for spray tans before sorority formals. The price jump felt wild."
Her then-boyfriend (now husband) Sam got tired of hearing her complain. "Why don't you just start a business doing this?" he suggested.
Her initial reaction? "I can't leave my job. I can't afford that. That's crazy," Courtney remembers. "I was just happy to have a job. I had a lot of friends that were unemployed, recent college grads in that era."
But the idea stuck. Sam offered to partner with her, and they each put in $500 – their entire starting capital. Courtney began offering spray tans in her Santa Monica apartment, with Sam strategically staying late at work or hitting the gym to avoid awkward encounters with clients.
"I partitioned off our dining room because people were naked and didn't want some random guy in the place," she laughs. "I don't think he's gone to the gym since, so maybe I should start taking clients at home again."
The apartment-based business took off faster than expected. Within three to four months, Courtney found herself turning down clients to go to her day job. The turning point was clear: either quit her job and grow the business, or shut it down entirely.
She chose growth.
By Memorial Day 2011, SUGARED + BRONZED opened its first retail location – a humble spot upstairs behind a tree, next to a nail salon on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. The prices were accessible: $39 for a standard tan and $49 for an express tan, a far cry from the $100+ competitors were charging.
"It wasn't a beautiful build-out. We didn't have money for that," Courtney says. "I was just in one mode: getting clients in the door and making them happy. I knew at some point I wanted to have beautiful stores, but that just wasn't a possibility at the time."
What they lacked in aesthetics, they made up for in authenticity. While competitors were marketing "organic" spray tans, Courtney took a different approach: "I'm honest to a fault. We just tried to be transparent. Our tan is as natural as it could possibly be, but there's no such thing as an organic spray tan out there, and we're not gonna lie."
That honesty resonated with clients. The business grew steadily, expanding to multiple locations across Los Angeles and eventually to other cities. Today, SUGARED + BRONZED operates over 30 locations across several states, including a thriving spot in New York's Union Square.
"We just did things differently," Courtney explains. "Even though it sounds silly with something like beauty, we've always embraced first principles thinking – how can we do this the best way possible and think about it from the ground up?"
Now, after more than a decade in business, SUGARED + BRONZED is embarking on its next chapter with an expanded product line launching in 2025. When they recently surveyed their clients, 90% didn't even know they had products – something Courtney sees as an opportunity rather than a problem.
"I wasn't that excited about our product before. And now I am," she says. "We're starting with a blank slate."
From a $1,000 investment and an apartment-based operation to a multi-state beauty brand, SUGARED + BRONZED's growth has been organic and steady. But Courtney's core philosophy has remained the same: stay focused on quality, maintain transparency with clients, and keep things authentic.
"We're not running SpaceX," she likes to tell her team. "Let's keep things simple."
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