Indoor tanning, which create a mini-storm in the 1980s, is bursting afresh on the retail landscape, fueled by new technology and marketing pitches. With souped-up lamps, inviting decor and gizmo-laden beds that resemble space ships, salons are popping up in strip malls across the Denver metro area, and beyond.

Helped along by scattered medical testimonials as well as by new-product offshoots like spray-tanning booths, chains and franchise operators are getting into the act.

Lakewood-based Executive Tans, with 87 boutiques in a dozen states, claims to be the largest operator. Fifty-one of its franchises are in Colorado, where the company has acquired a number of independently owned salons.

"Business is rocking the house," says Brent Murdock, manager of Bronze Works at 555 Broadway where a 30-bed layout services upwards of 300 customers that come to chill out daily.

Nationally, trade groups say that tanning salons, along with their suppliers and manufacturers, have blossomed into a $5 billion business. The Indoor Tanning Association claims there are 25,000 retail outlets, and measuring growth in average beds per unit - says that number has risen from six to nine since 1998.

Other beds are popping up in unlikely spots such as beauty parlors.

"There is plenty of growth yet to come," says Richard Swanson, who has expanded his Tan Time salon in Glendale to two outlets and added a supply house.

To hear the industry tell it, the tanning business never washed out, but it was hurt a the outset by warnings of ultraviolet light over exposure from primitive equipment and of ill-trained operators. Then, too, the market became saturated, dragging many operators down.

Today the problems have ebbed, asserts Dan Humiston, association president and operator of a 32-store chain upstate New York.

"The early concerns of danger have largely subsided, and we are much more stable now," he says.

"Tanning was off the radar for a while," say Wayne Smeal, Executive Tans president. "But we're definitely a force to be reckoned with now."

In two years, the franchiser has tripled his units and claims to have boosted total sales form $1.2 million in 2000 to more tan $10 million today.

An erstwhile frozen-food marketer, Smeal, 41, plunged into tanning 12 years ago, buying a salon in Tamarac Square that he still owns. Today, from cramped offices in a Lakewood high-rise, he and a corporate staff of 14 oversee a business that he likes to proclaim has not end in sight.

Aggressively countering the critics, the industry touts the health benefits of measured doses of ultraviolet light, which contends the new, sophisticated lamps can filter. Appealing to vacation planners, promoters are marketing the salons as ideal for building base tans to prevent later burning on the beach or slopes.

"We didn't know what was going on in the '80s," Smeal says.

"Now we have the research to back what we're doing."

Then, too, the speed, convenience and relaxed atmosphere seem to attract time-starved tan-seekers, many of whom flock in at lunchtime or after work typically for 15-minute sessions, two or three times weekly. Others, like Angela Messenger, a Denver architect, relish a quick power nap and chance to unwind.

"It's quick and there are no weather worries," she says. "You can get tanned on your own schedule."

Many of the salon are strategically positioned in strip malls to accommodate the largely female clientele, who enjoy the fast and easy access because they usually arrive and leave without wearing makeup.

Typically, tanners can choose among a selection of beds, which can cost from 30 cents to $2 a minute depending on heat intensity and filtering. Popular with a number of aficionados are unlimited monthly specials that can run as low as $25.

Of course, tanning works best with any of an assortment of moisturizers, accelerators and other lotions, the salons are quick to tell clients. They often stock an assortment of swim wear, beach bags and other gear, too, profitable sidelines that can total 20 percent of revenues.

At Executive Tans new salon in the Lowry Town Center, customers stretch out in enclosed fiberglass cocoons in private rooms named Tahiti, St. Tropez, Cancun and Jamaica.

Encased on the top-of-the-line, orange-and-blue, Ergoline Avant-Garde 600 bed, the bather, with a flick of a switch, can order up an extra burst of heat on the face and shoulders, summon more air conditioning or switch stereo channels.

"I'm toasty brown," said Katie Greenwood, 23, emerging from a recent nine-minute session, one of several she planned in preparation for a wedding.

Also stirring industry interest are a new breed of sunless tanning techniques and treatments, among them phone-boothlike cubicles which envelop the body in mist. Because the result are almost immediate, the process is clicking with consumers even though the "tan" is essentially body makeup and wears off in less than a week.

"Older people especially like the mists because there is no wrinkle protential," says Holly Rodenberger, co-owner of The Palms Tanning Resort in Greenwood Village, where a 28-second Mystic Tan treatment that costs $20 is attracting as much business as her salon's 11 beds.

"The sprays will be gigantic in a couple of years," says Smeal, who has 11 units in his stores and feels they will help him reach a market that some industry observes say is barely tapped.

His prime target? Smeal says unquestionably it is the American male.

"They are the fastest-growing demographics," he says. "Because a tan is viewed as healthy and vibrant, it is the only socially accepted cosmetic for men in our society."

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