Every Chinese New Year, "perm, nail art, eyelashes" is a three-piece set for girls.
Especially for nail art, delicate girls stuff the anticipation of the New Year into their nails. A few years ago, there was a long queue in the nail salon, and a nail salon in Xi'an recently waited for nearly 300 people every day, and some customers waited for up to 4 hours.
Nail art ** is also rising, and the "festival fee" for nail art usually costs 50-60 yuan. Someone even asked about "a set of nail art costs 1880 yuan" and didn't dare to reply.
Long queues, ** expensive or second. Nail art is easy to overturn, and the clerk always asks the card to be used by girls.
However, in the past year or two, the consumption of a new type of nail art such as "wearing nails" has emerged: as low as 99 yuan 2 pairs, you can wear it in five minutes. Will it be a nail replacement?
Realizing "nail art freedom" with wearing nails?
For the delicate girl Linla, the primary attraction of wearing armor is cheapness.
It costs at least two or three hundred to go to the nail salon and only brush the nails with a nude color, and it costs at least 400-500 yuan to do a simple shape, and if you choose crystal diamonds, broken diamonds, glitter or chain diamonds, it costs nearly 1,000 yuan for two hands. ”
What's more, the beauty of 1,000 yuan can only last for about 1-2 months. As the nails become longer, fall out or fade, Lin La, who has to go for a manicure once a month, spends at least 3,000 yuan a year on her hands. As far as she knows, some people who have higher requirements for nail styling have to go for trimming every half month, and the annual cost is nearly 10,000 yuan.
But it's much cheaper to wear armor.
It has become popular since 2022 and is a DIY nail art product that allows girls to buy it home and paste it by themselves.
It is divided into two categories: "hand-worn armor" and "machine-worn armor". The former is to sell the nail piece after drawing a pattern on the nail piece, and it can even be customized by the drawing, and the price ranges from tens of yuan to hundreds of yuan; The latter is a factory assembly line to print the pattern on the nail sheet, mass production, and it can even be as low as 9$9 for 2 pairs.
However, no matter what kind of nail is worn, it is generally much cheaper than going to the store to get a nail art.
There are at least 100 styles in the nail salon that Lin La often buys on e-commerce, and she picks and chooses from styles such as "Diamond-studded Cherries", "Black and White Love" and "Year of the Dragon", and a total of 200 nail pieces are checked out together, adding up to only 100 yuan.
Although the lifespan of wearing nails is shorter than that of in-store nail art, usually only about half a month, the nail pieces can be reused again and again by replacing the jelly glue with adhesive effect. Coming and going, wearing armor is more economical.
In addition to the "freedom of nail art" in terms of money, flexibility in putting on and taking off and saving time are the second major attractions of wearing nails.
To do nail art in the shop, you have to sit for at least two or three hours, as if "serving the beauty". Wearing nails compresses the long process into a fast-food mode: polishing nails, cleaning, sticking jelly glue, sticking nail slices, squeezing out air bubbles, and in less than five minutes in exchange for a new pair of armor, which Linla would like to call "the liberation of productive forces from the industrial revolution".
According to the law of conservation of energy, money and time are saved, and other experiences are curtailed.
Try to spend 29After 9 yuan bought a wearing nail from the Internet, the urban white-collar Moriko knew that this was also the last time.
The nude pink on the picture is crystal clear, but the real thing is like a cheap pink plastic nail piece, which makes her deeply understand what "you get what you pay for". In Senzi's view, the consumption of the beauty industry is for the beauty and pleasure of "I am happy to buy it", and it is detached from this core goal, and it is meaningless to be cheap. "Just like people who like gold, they will definitely not want to spend dozens of yuan cheaply to buy a fake gold ring to wear. ”
In addition to the mismatch, the process of sticking the nail piece by himself also made Moriko crazy.
The nail technician in the store will tailor it according to each person's nail shape, but it still requires skills to apply it yourself: first of all, you must measure the nail circumference to choose the right number of nail pieces, and secondly, the fitting technology must be high, otherwise not only will it not stick firmly, but the gap between the nail pieces will also be easy to become inflamed.
The nail pieces that you stick yourself are often very fragile, and if you carry something and lift your pants, you will drop several of them. Moriko said that the cheap "machine handmade armor" is too light and thin, and it often falls off after wearing it for a few days. If you want to reuse it, you usually have to buy more expensive "hand-worn armor". But even celebrities such as Song Yanfei and Mao Xiaotong have also seen their armor fall off on the red carpet.
In this way, the so-called cost-effective advantage of wearing armor has been eliminated a lot. In other words, it still has a certain threshold of acceptance for consumers.
Is the new business of "wearing nails" reliable?
The girls had mixed opinions about wearing armor, but the business did take off.
On the one hand, nail salons are looking at nail wearing as a "new addition". It is understood that many nail salons will add a new business to sell wearable nails online, with prices ranging from tens to hundreds of yuan.
On the other hand, physical stores specializing in wearing nails have also opened in offline shopping malls.
The "Nailook Nail Wear" nail wear chain store with a green door has opened in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu and other business districts, and the brand concept aims to allow girls to combine nail art with the style and scene of the day.
There are usually 20-30 stores with a range of 79-300 yuan for wearing nail products, and there are 1-2 clerks who can help with wearing on site.
According to the franchise manual, as of November 2023, there are currently at least 46 Nailook stores in the business district.
Behind this chain store is Naidu Planet***, which announced the completion of a 10 million yuan Series A financing in April 2023. It is reported that this money is used for the construction and improvement of the hand-worn nail chain, which is used for the channel expansion of the nail chain brand nailook.
Currently, Nailook is open to joining. According to the franchise manual, franchisees need to pay a franchise fee of 19,800 yuan, including operating fees and service fees, in addition to product purchase and decoration fees, ranging from 70,000 to 120,000 yuan. The rent of the shopping mall is also borne by the franchisee.
The wearable nail products in the store are as low as dozens of yuan and as high as 100 yuan, which is far higher than that of e-commerce. There is consumer feedback that the quality of its products is not bad, the pattern is trendy, and the jelly glue is also relatively firm. But some people think it's not cost-effective, "No matter how much money you spend on this **, you can go to the store to do it."
On the official account of Nailook Xiaohongshu, the case of "12 stores with a monthly income of 110,000" was released, and there was no shortage of people who consulted and joined in the comments.
However, from online fire to offline wearing armor, whether it can make money for a long time remains to be verified.
A number of nail girls said that if they don't consider their budget, they are more inclined to spend on nail art in stores. Before weddings, New Year's holidays, parties and other solemn occasions, girls are still willing to spend a few hours "being a pair of confident hands" and choose to wear nails, mainly as a substitute choice.
Why is nail art so expensive?
It is the long-term pain point of "it is too expensive to do nail art" that to some extent gave birth to the birth of "flat replacement" wearing nails.
And nail art is expensive, and there is a reason.
On the one hand, the effectiveness of nail art is heavily dependent on the manicurist's personal skills and aesthetics, and the better the manicurist's skills, the more expensive the fee usually is.
Snail Nuo, the person in charge of the Dolyu Japanese Nail and Eyelash (Qingdao) store, explained to the interesting report that the nail technician has to do a series of services for the customer's nails: including nail polishing, disinfection, construction, dead skin removal, paper tray extension, gradient blending, sticky drill and other delicate processes. If the nail technician is aesthetically pleasing and using the right technique, the nail art will be fuller and shinier, and the effect will be more firmly fitted.
On the other hand, the effect of the manicure is directly proportional to the quality of the materials used.
Choose imported glue nail art materials from Japan or South Korea with high saturation and good color and luster to make more textured nail art, and of course, the pricing of nail art will follow.
Girls who are difficult to resist nail art** usually can't help but "add items".
According to the snail, between the primer and the reinforcing layer, many people have to fall into several decorations such as broken diamonds, bows, pearls, hand-painted, gold and silver foil glue, glitter, and chain diamonds. A single rhinestone of 10 yuan is not expensive, but ten fingers add up to a lot and will cost hundreds of dollars more like running water.
If you choose imported nail polish glue with better color rendering, Japanese-style and Russian-style services with more detailed technology and service - the dead skin fades cleaner, and the color is closer to the root of the finger without leaving gaps, as well as hand-painted, three-dimensional, embossed, blended and other delicate styles with higher difficulty, this ** can be superimposed on it.
"It's hard to resist nail art" is just one of the reasons why it costs a lot. According to Huang Liang (pseudonym), head of Aomi Kix, a Japanese-style nail and eyelash consulting company, the beauty industry itself lacks industry standards, including pricing.
In Huang Liang's view, it is normal for nail art services to have different prices, but there are some "unreasonablely expensive": "It is extremely high, but the materials and technology are not very good, but the store location and decoration are better, and its price is just a business strategy." ”
If a nail salon wants to be convincingly expensive, it mainly relies on improving its technology and service standards. For example, the upgrading of manicure technology, products, aesthetics and services. "Many people do nail art not only for their favorite style, but also to enjoy the service experience in the atmosphere. Huang Liang said that a good experience will bring repeat customers, which is a crucial source of customers for the beauty industry.
As a practitioner, Snail didn't feel that opening a nail salon was very profitable. She said that each customer has to do a manicure for 2 hours, and there are three nail technicians in the store, and the working hours are fixed for 8 hours, and each person can only do 4-5 customers at most per day, and the income is capped.
The snail believes in the consumption value of the store, and is not afraid that the lower wearing armor will steal the store's business. "Wearing nails is more like jewelry that can be changed at any time on different occasions, while going to the store to do nails focuses on enjoying a level of service experience. "Her shop also has a small number of armor** at the moment, but it's not a mainstream business.
But when "replacement" appears, it always means that the competitive landscape has quietly changed. In the face of the low-cost and fast-growing nail wearing, if you can't improve the experience of nail art in the store, it may be difficult to win the victory on the fingertips of the girls.
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