The outstanding success of the Vertical Sunbeds is due to a number of reasons.

Firstly, its simplicity, you get changed, walk in, push the start button and hey presto you get a tan.

The other reasons for the popularity of the vertical sunbed are that they do not cause any pressure points i.e. when you are lying on a sunbed the area at the base of the spine does not tan due to reduced blood flow and the net result is two white areas!

The hygiene aspect also comes into the formula for the preferential choice of the vertical sunbed as one is not lying in someone else's sweat (even if it has been wiped down).

If a client suffers from claustrophobia it is more pleasant to be in a vertical sunbed rather than entombed in a laydown sunbed.

It was while I was in Germany in 1976 that I saw my first 'sonnen couch'. This was a ten tubed base unit which I renamed SUNBED. I imported my first 60 sunbeds and the face of tanning changed forever!

By 1979 a number of other company's had started (non of whom still exist) and one company whose Managing Director was a boat builder, built a tower of tubes which was the first vertical sunbed ever made. Few were sold and the company disappeared at the beginning of the 1980's. The reason for their failure, was that the 180cm, 100w lamp was simply not strong enough.

During the 1990's the production of sunbeds started in the USA and two of the manufacturers produced a reasonably successful vertical sunbed which was the start of a change in the direction of tanning. The reflector tube was, at this stage been invented, greatly increasing the UV output.

The first Ultrasun vertical stand up tanning machine was produced in 1993 and was made from certain parts of a top selling lay down Ultrasun sunbed. The covers were fabricated from steel and the chokes were attached to the covers making the unit very heavy indeed. This made them difficult to install.

In 1995, due to the huge demand from the suntanning public and therefore leisure centres, beauty and hairdressing salons and the new wave of tanning shops a more attractive easier to install set of vertical units were made out of a heavy duty, colourful plastic.

The main reasons for the success of the stand up was hygiene (they did not have to be wiped clean after each use) and space saving.

In 1997, Ultrasun bought out a smaller rival Dutch sunbed manufacturer called Garda Sun. In 1998 Ultrasun went into production with the Garda Sun 7000 which used a 160w 1.8 metre tube and Helionova sold over 1,000 of these units over the next two years in the UK and Ultrasun sold several thousand world-wide.

Two further developments followed from 1998 onwards, a top cooler was installed on the machines increasing the enjoyment from stand up tanning and more powerful longer tubes were introduced to take into account of the taller tanners that were using the machines (the average height increased by 2" during the nineties).

The latest vertical sunbeds from Ultrasun supplied in the UK by Helionova are the i7, i8 and i9 Power Towers. All out vertical units comply with the 0.3 regulation that became law on the 1st April 2009.