I see these places everywhere, but the sheer quantity of them seems to be a rather recent phenomenon. I used to think that it was mostly due to low startup costs: a card table and a few bottles of goop. But what was the popularizer of these places? Was there a magazine advertising campaign or something on the tube?
These things go in cycles. Yes - start-up costs are low and they, in the UK at least, often get cheap rents and tax holidays for the first year or so. No qualifications are required either, so anyone can do it.
As I walk around our local shopping centre I used to complain that ‘every second shop’ was a shoe shop. Then it was card shops, then phones, then juice. The latest seems to be coffee shops and I boggle at the idea that we have so many people who are prepared to spend so much on hot beverages. As I sit sipping a double espresso of course.
I have the sense that nail decoration technology and complicated technique have proliferated, so there may be more money in the business than there once was.
It is also reasonable to assume that young women have more disposable income than they used to.
This investigative report from The New York Times describes the terrible abuse suffered by some nail salon workers.
So one answer is that it’s easier to make money if you underpay your employees, or don’t pay them at all.
It is partly due to actress Tippi Hedron’s original efforts to help Vietnamese refugee women establish careers.
It also makes for a high cash flow front for money laundering. S’all good, man!
Stranger
I don’t see any good data related to year but there’s been some growth in demand as men became customers. That would tend to drive either bigger salons or more of them.
in some cases Mom runs the nail salon while pop runs the chinese restaurant nearby.
I thought that in the US, the influx of Asian women doing nails made manicure/pedicures very cheap. Since they were so cheap, it became reasonable for women to get a mani/pedi every few weeks. With so many women now getting regular nail treatment, there is a much larger market and thus more nail salons.
What I’ve always wondered is why so many nail salons have names like “Amy Nails” or “Tina Nails”. Not “Tina’s Nails”, or “Tina’s Nail Salon”, or “Salon Tina”. “Tina Nails”, as though it were a woman’s name. I’ve lived in two different states on totally opposite ends of the U.S., and have seen plenty of salons in both whose names took this form.
This was quite an important element of the second series of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy radio series, IIRC.
Cards? As in playing cards/Magic: The Gathering-type cards, or like the “Birthday/Social Occcasion” cards?
Pedicure chairs. Makes it very relaxing.
I think it’s a matter of English translation. There are languages where “Tina Nails” it the proper grammar. Many of the nail salons seem to be run by immigrants, so maybe the name makes sense in their language.