With Maui Babe nearly three decades old, Anderson figured he could modernize the tanning accelerator for avid beach goers, who he felt were a neglected audience, with updated positioning and design. “I love product, I love brand, but I’m like, I want to do something besides beverage,” he recalls. “I feel like it’s too crowded. I wasn’t excited by it. So, I was looking for a new vehicle and the light bulb went off.”

That light bulb led Anderson to launch Tanning Club with an au courant retro vibe and relevant spot in the sun care and self-tanning market as the merits of sunshine are being hotly debated. With the tagline “bronze responsibly,” it launched its first product, Royal Tanning Balm, in 2022, and racked up a quarter million in sales in its first year. The balm is packed with skin-nourishing grape seed, coconut, avocado oil, shea butter and raspberry seed oil. Tanning Club got off the ground in direct-to-consumer distribution with 1,000 aluminum paint tubes filled with a formula Anderson whipped up in his kitchen.

Today, Tanning Club’s product lineup has been enlarged to 10 priced from $6 to $36, including four sunscreens with SPF protection ranging from 6 to 30. Tan de Soleil is the SPF 6 option and draws inspiration from Bain de Soleil, which had SPF as low as 4. The assortment also includes two lip balms, After Tan Body Lotion, Browning Lotion and Royal Tanning Balm. Tanning Club is stocked by about 100 independent retailers such as chainlets Sandal Factory and Beach Bunny Swimwear, along with hotels, Anthropologie, Free People, Moda Operandi and Revolve.

Tanning Club raised about $1 million last year from angel investors, including Paul Frank Industries co-founder and former CEO John Oswald, CJ Stos, an original investor in apparel brand Vuori, and Sanuk founder Jeff Kelley. It introduced refreshed packaging and branding in January this year. It’s planning to extend its reach and has tapped sales agency Van Pelt to increase its presence in beauty-focused distribution and footprint across the travel segment, hospitality and boutiques, especially in coastal areas of Florida, Hawaii and Mexico. The brand is adding The Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes to its partner list. It’s already sold at Ritz-Carlton’s Waikiki Beach location and select Four Seasons properties.

Anderson initially co-founded Tanning Club with Tyler Hosseini, who has parted ways with the brand, and has brought in childhood friend, fellow surfer and Newport Beach native JP Collett, founder of skin and bath brand Natureofthings, to build Tanning Club with. The brand’s embrace of the sun isn’t universally adored at a time when a growing group of people avoid the sun nearly completely out of fear of skin cancer and premature aging. When Anderson and Collett were fundraising for Tanning Club, perplexed potential investors warned them about the dangers of tanning.

“‘How can you guys be doing this?’” Anderson recalls one investor in a meeting saying. “Another’s like, ‘You guys are the bad boys of sunscreen.’ When I walked out of that meeting, we didn’t get a single investment, but I’ve never been more confident that we were onto something. They don’t get it, and that’s perfect, but I see it through our sales, and I see it through the demand of our products, there was a neglected consumer out there.”

That neglected consumer could be a part of a broader cultural shift. A counter-trend to sun avoidance is emerging. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services and leader of the Make America Health Again (MAHA) movement, highlights sunlight for mental health and vitamin D purposes. Personal care brand Primally Pure doubled down on that message in a controversial advertising campaign for its mineral sunscreen that pronounced, “The sun isn’t poison.” The brand has questioned the safety of ultraviolet filters in sunscreens like oxybenzone and octinoxate, although they’ve been assessed to be safe at the levels in sunscreens.

Tanning Club is a sunscreen advocate and expects to expand its Sun Carefully sunscreen collection to brightly-colored zinc sticks made for the face, reminiscent of the founders’ early 1990s surf days in Southern California. The brand’s zinc formulas will harness “bad boys of sunscreen” energy, though, and Anderson is fine if not everyone is clamoring for entry into Tanning Club’s club.

“You’re going to love us or you’re going to hate us, but, you know what, our tone, our energy, our voice is just fun, lighthearted, positive and happy,” he says. “We’re not telling you to go get sunburnt, we’re not telling you to get tan. If you want to get tan and you want to have some cool products, we got some for you.”