Bain de Soleil is about to launch a new sunscreen brand that tans the skin at the same time it offers protection from harmful ultraviolet rays.

SPF + Colour manages to simultaneously perform these seemingly contradictory tasks by combining a sunless tanning ingredient with sunscreen ingredients.

Quite a number of combination sunless tanner/sun-block products have hit the market in the last few years.

Among the entries are such brands as Marcelle, Lancome, Elizabeth Arden and Bain de Soleil’s Mega Tan.

Most, including Mega Tan, are positioned as sunless tanners with a secondary function as sun-blockers.

But Herdt & Charton, the Canadian distributor of Bain de Soleil, which is owned by u.s.-based Procter & Gamble, is taking the opposite tack with SPF + Colour, positioning the brand as a sunscreen with a secondary function as a sunless tanner.

High SPF

Jacqueline Poisson, Herdt & Charton’s marketing director on Bain de Soleil, says the company will push the sun-blocking characteristics of the brand because it contains among the highest spf levels of any combination product on the market. SPF + Colour is available in SPF 15 and SPF 30.

Most other combination products on the market have spf levels below 10.

This includes Mega Tan, which has SPF 4. At the upper end of the scale, Elizabeth Arden’s Natural Look line has a sunless tanner for the face with SPF 15.

According to Packaged Facts, a New York-based research firm, the sunless tanning segment is the fastest growing segment of the sun care market in the u.s.

The market grew 20% in 1993 over 1992, pushing annual sales to US$86 million.

Herdt & Charton began shipping SPF + Colour at the start of the month and will run ads for the brand in the May and June issues of several English- and French-language magazines.