Why Mr. Olympia Big Ramy Uses Pro Tan®
The #1 Competition Tanning Product in the Industry
Interview With Pro Tan President and Owner Stacy Kaufman
By Ron Harris
If you’re even remotely familiar with competitive bodybuilding and the other divisions, you know that on show day, they all use “stage color” to give a deep and rich shade that brings out all the fine details and cuts under the glaring lights. Since 1987, the undisputed leader has been Pro Tan. All the champions use it, including Brandon Curry, Janet Layug, Dexter Jackson, and our reigning Mr. Olympia Big Ramy. As someone who has both used the product many times and appreciated its masterful physique enhancement at countless amateur and pro events, it was my pleasure to sit down with the President of Pro Tan, Stacy Kaufman, and learn a little more.
Q: How did you get into this business?
A: Right out of college, I started selling suntan oil on the beach and working at a cosmetics factory at night. I attended a local contest and noticed that the athletes were using baby oil as posing oil, which reflected the light too much. Immediately I thought, I could make something better that would absorb the light while still giving just the right amount of shine. I developed my first product, Professional Posing Oil, in 1984. Pro Tan came along three years later. Until that point, bodybuilders were using a product sold at dermatologists’ offices and drug stores called DY-O-Derm that had been developed for the skin condition vitiligo, a lack of pigment that causes white blotches on the skin. I used this product as a benchmark to help develop the Original Pro Tan formula.
Q: Who were some of the first athletes to use and endorse Pro Tan?
A: Rich Gaspari was my first athlete, and soon after we had Lee Labrada, Gary Strydom, Berry de Mey, Bob Paris, and Shawn Ray. These athletes would take the product all over the world when they traveled for contests and exhibitions, and soon we had everyone using Pro Tan.
Q: Fast-forward to present day. How did you get Big Ramy on the Pro Tan team?
A: I’ve known Ramy since he competed in his first Mr. Olympia in 2013. He was always such a nice guy, but communication was tough back then, as he didn’t speak any English like he does now. As your readers know, for the first few years of his pro career Ramy was part of a group of athletes and coaches based in Kuwait. They used another company’s product. At the last couple of Mr. Olympia contests that he did before he won in 2020, his tan was terrible, and our Pro Tan girls always had to fix his color. His coaches would tell us to make him darker and darker, but he was already too dark. We even had to tell the coaches at one point to please let us do our jobs, as we know what will look best on stage. Ramy himself was embarrassed about his color when he showed up in 2018, and so grateful when we were able to fix it for him. As he prepared for the 2020 Mr. Olympia that he won, he was working with a different coach and told me, “Stacy, I am 100% Pro Tan from now on!”
Q: I don’t think everyone realizes how critical stage color is. I have literally seen men and women lose contests because they weren’t dark enough or their color was blotchy or had streaks running down their body.
A: Part of Pro Tan’s role, and especially these past 17 years as the official stage color for the Olympia Weekend, is that we take responsibility for making sure each and every athlete looks his or her best up there and can optimally showcase the physiques they worked so hard to display. I personally feel we did our best job to date at the last Olympia. Promoter Dan Solomon pulled off a triumphant event in the middle of a pandemic with incredible staging and lighting. Having Big Ramy win the ultimate title with our color was just the icing on the cake.
Q: When Pro Tan started over 30 years ago, all we had was bodybuilding. Now we have 11 distinct divisions for men and women. They all use Pro Tan, but do they all use it the same way?
A: There are different color levels for different groups. In divisions like Bikini and Men, we go for a more natural color that isn’t so dark, like they just came off the beach. Figure and Fitness should be a little darker than that, and of course once you’re into Classic and Bodybuilding, you want a darker shade to highlight all the striations and separations.
Q: Back when I competed, I always loved putting that first coat of Pro Tan on. The smell of it and seeing how different I looked got me so excited because I knew that after all those months of hard work dieting and training, it was almost time to show it off. There was a famous line from the movie Apocalypse Now, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” I loved the smell of Pro Tan before a contest.
A: I can’t tell you how many times athletes have told me that, and it still makes me both happy and humble every time. I love what I do, helping competitors look their very best when it counts the most. Having been able to work with so many athletes and promoters over the years has been so rewarding.
Q: Honestly Stacy, I would be hard-pressed to think of any other company that’s been such a vital and integral part of bodybuilding competition for as long as Pro Tan. No disrespect to your competitors, but when I think of stage color, and I am sure I speak for many thousands of us in the industry, I think of Pro Tan.
A: Thank you. I feel blessed and look forward to many more years of helping athletes highlight their hard work and showcase their physiques with the absolute best stage color possible. I would also like to acknowledge my dedicated Pro Tan “Chicas” that have kept Pro Tan in the forefront for so many years, they make the athletes look their very best and feel good before stepping on stage.
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