I had a terrible dream the other night. It was obviously a stress dream regarding our upcoming cover shoot. In my dream, I woke up and looked at my alarm clock; it read 11:30 a.m. I was supposed to be at the shoot with breakfast at 8:30 a.m.! I couldn’t believe that no one called me to find out where I was.
      The next thing I knew I was at the office (if only traveling to work was as quick and easy as it is in my dreams…), and nothing was going right. The nail tech brought a model with him, and she had different nails on each finger, none of them looking like we discussed and all of them ugly! I didn’t want to be rude and tell him that this was all wrong but we couldn’t possibly photograph her fingers the way they were, and I was panicking.
Finally, after some running around, I found the model we had cast for the shoot. You know how it is in dreams; first everything is a mess and then the answer is standing right in front of you, like it was there the entire time. I suggested that we actually use the model we hired and put new nails on her, saving us from the dreaded mish-mosh on the other girl’s hand. Everyone agreed, and work began. Of course, at this point it was already well into the afternoon, and I started stressing out that the shoot wasn’t going to end until after midnight!
      Fortunately, back in real life, my alarm went off at 7 a.m. like it was supposed to. I got to work on time—with breakfast—and everything was as it should be. No crazy nails, no extra models, just the normal deal. In fact, the shoot went really well, ran completely smoothly. I hope you enjoy what you see on our May cover, and sympathize with what I went through the night before!

I’ve been living without a bookshelf in my apartment for an embarrassingly long time. I was holding out for just the right one (that I could afford), but somehow looking for one always fell to the bottom of my to-do list. I had a system that worked; yes, a bookshelf would make everything look better, but I had managed up until now just fine.
      My brother offered to give me his old bookshelf and I realized that it just made sense to take it. This didn’t take away from the fact that I still wanted it to be just right. And in order to make it that way, it would mean I would have to stain the wood a darker color. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got—a fun, do-it-yourself project!
      I went to the hardware store and bought sand paper, stain and brushes, and set up shop in the garage. But the thrill of the project faded about 10 minutes into the sanding process. This was hard work! I’m not going to lie; there was some foot-stamping involved and maybe a small tantrum or two. But after three days of sanding, staining, drying and sanding some more, my bookshelf was complete.
      In the grand scheme of things, it only took three days to complete this project, and my apartment looks a thousand times better with it there. The same thing can go for a salon. It’s so easy for us to get used to the way things look and convince ourselves that it’s fine. But it may not look like that to others. Adding new storage space or repainting a reception area can make all the difference between passable and a beautiful salon appearance. It may not be fun while you’re doing it, but the end results are completely worth it!

What kinds of things have you done to update your salon? Share your stories with me!

When movie theaters up their ticket prices to $10, do they send out a notification? Do the managers of your local supermarket get nervous that consumers won’t buy hamburgers after they raise the price of meat? Of course not! Yet many nail technicians shy away from the necessary step of raising their prices. The driving factor for most seems to be the fear that they will lose clients, or, at the very least, have to face irate clientele. It’s important to remember that raising prices is a necessity just to keep up with inflation. But often raising prices compensates for more than that, such as the increasing cost of overhead, remaining competitive with other local salons, not to mention simply deserving a raise.

When it comes to raising prices, there are a few things to remember:

Choose the most popular services. Don’t feel as though you have to raise prices across the board. Chances are, the services that are bringing in the most revenue are the most popular, and those clients won’t mind paying a little extra for their favorites. Pink-and-white sculptured nails and spa pedicures are easy targets for a little boost.

Do your homework. When deciding how to much to increase prices, make sure to do some research. Look at your competition—salons that are in the same area and offer similar services in a similar environment—to find out what they are charging. Compare your expenses with those from last year to determine how much your operating costs have gone up. And remember your demographics; you don’t want to increase prices so much that you alienate the clients in your area.

Remain confident. Be aware that you may lose a few clients when you raise prices, but stand by your decision. If some clients give you a hard time, consider writing a letter explaining why you did it. See the Business Letter Workshop in the August issue of Nailpro for help. And even if you lose a few clients, keep in mind that if you raise a $20 manicure to $25, you’ll still be making more money than you were before. Besides, quality clients will understand that your superior services are worth it!

For many years, clients and techs alike have turned a blind eye to the potential harm that can come from an unsanitary pedicure, myself included. I used to go to any nail salon—the cheaper the better—and stick my feet into any tub of water. Once I picked up my magazine I wasn’t looking at the implements to see if they were sanitized and disinfected or if they had the previous client’s nails and dead skin attached to them. I simply felt that I had never had trouble before, why should I worry now? The problem is, just because I had been lucky enough not to develop a fungus, infection or worse, didn’t mean that it wasn’t a potential hazard.

      Now more than ever, stories are popping up in the news about the horrifying effects of pedicures in unsafe environments. Two deaths, including that of Kimberly Jackson in February 2006 from a staph infection that she contracted from a whirlpool foot spa in a salon in Fort Worth, Texas, sent the state into a panic. Across the country, others states are tightening their regulations in order to prevent these occurrences, and nail techs are now required to reevaluate their cleaning methods and habits.

      Naturally, the increase of bad publicity surrounding pedicures has seeped into the public sentiment. Women are becoming wary of getting pedicures, which doesn’t bode well for nail technicians and their businesses. Besides the obvious safety issues (and let’s be honest, no one wants to see their clients get hurt), it’s the technicians’ responsibility to improve upon the sanitizing and disinfecting measures to keep the pedicure business booming.

      Some techs maintain that certain new regulations (for example, Texas’ requirement of the use of autoclaves to clean instruments) are being overcautious. Or that refusing to work on a client that has any visible signs of anything (i.e. a cut, fungus, wart, no matter how mild) is unrealistic. If we, in the industry, are responsible for the pedicure’s reputation, then shouldn’t we uphold these high standards?

What do you think?
—Stephanie