She’s got bottle: Nails Inc founder Thea Green on how to build a business with a £22 million turnover — and be a working mum

Thea Green has got it nailed. She tells Lucy Tobin why mothers work harder, what’s hot in manis and how to run a business with polish
Full circle: Thea Green started Nails Inc after trips to New York. Now she wants to take the champagne nail bar back to Manhattan (Picture: Rankin)
Lucy Tobin30 April 2014

Thea Green thinks we should all act a bit more American. The woman who clocked the nail-bar trend in New York then imported it to London in the form of Nails Inc, making manicures as popular as macchiatos, reckons it would lead to a lot less angst.

“American women are not at all embarrassed about having everything done by someone else,” says blonde, smiley Green over a scrambled eggs breakfast in Mayfair. “It’s very different from people in the UK. American women will talk to you about their cleaning lady, their hairdresser, their fitness instructor, all the things they outsource at home and work. British women hide it, they pretend that they’re doing it all themselves. I like that American way of being completely transparent about having help. It’s how you get things done.”

Green, 38, is good at getting things done. She launched Nails Inc aged 23, juggling its first year in business with her old job, as a fashion editor at Tatler, to pay the bills. Her light-bulb moment came on a work trip to New York, where nail bars offered quick, cheap manicures for busy professionals. Back here, it was only ladies-who-lunched who had time to sit around for hours at a spa getting their nails done.

So Green raised £250,000 from private investors to open Nails Inc’s first store on South Molton Street in 1999; now the business turns over £22 million a year, has 59 stores, and saw its founder handed an MBE three years ago. Green runs the business alongside bringing up three children — Allegra is four, Harry is seven and Charlie is 10 — while her husband Nick is a fellow entrepreneur, the founder of web business Printed.com.

Sounds, um, busy. “I’ve never had it any other way, I just get on with it,” says Green. Money helps, of course, but the entrepreneur reckons working mothers are the most productive people around. “My experience is that they work harder for you than any one else,” she says. “Working mothers are more likely to log on and do their work at 9pm, when the kids are in bed — they’ll give you more because they’re pleased that they’ve got that flexibility and they don’t want to lose it.”

Nails Inc employs 400 staff; only a “handful” are men, Green says. “Our customers like being treated by men but when guys come for a job interview they see the woman-packed office and they’re not very keen. But I will champion women all day long — I have these incredibly productive women who work for me and have families and just work it all out. It’s shocking that sexism in the workplace still exists — cutting out 50 per cent of the population can never be a good idea, whether it’s based on gender or any other criteria.”

Nowadays Green speaks authoritatively as a major London employer. But when she launched Nails Inc in 1999, she “didn’t know how to do anything, I didn’t know how to do P&L [a profit and loss statement], I didn’t know how to make nail varnish. I learnt as I went along, going through everyone else’s nail polishes and packaging and trying to work out where they were sourcing it. It was the Nineties, I was Googling things on a dial-up modem, waiting for 10 minutes for search results and asking everyone I knew until I got the answer.”

She’s clearly got the right answers: Nails Inc now has 10,000 customers a week, with a third of sales coming from overseas — but Green, sporting a Daz-white blazer, slick black nails, silver-studded shoes, a grape-sized diamond ring and big hoop earrings that bounce as she speaks, admits her success is tinged with guilt.

“My kids are at school all day but I still feel guilty. Always. You feel very guilty with babies because they automatically cry when you walk out of the room, so you feel like you’ve done something awful. Now I see that my kids are growing up and becoming their own people and saying ‘bye’ to me with big happy faces, it’s easier. But part of being a working parent is that you feel guilty every day about something.”

Her daily routine involves waking in the family’s Fulham home at 6am and dropping her children at school before getting to the office by 8.45am. That’s on home days — launching Nails Inc in the US, Green flies the New York red-eye “all the time — two-day trips with lots of meetings rammed in because I like coming home”.

The rest of her working days are spent in stores or working on products. She says: “Innovation and technology are driving polish trends. We are seeing great developments in special effects and a rise of ballet-inspired colours and florals. We also have a whole range of new fabric-inspired polishes being launched this year.”

After the office it’s straight home to the children. “They go to bed, I’ll have dinner and I clock on again, booking calls for 9 o’clock when I’ve got my second wind and am happy to work till 10.30.”

She works differently to her husband. “Nick doesn’t work in the evenings but he’s an insomniac, so he wakes up at 4am and does his emails in bed. He’s done it every night since we met.”

On family holidays Green says she “just keeps going. I don’t like to switch off from the iPhone properly — I’ll look at my email three times a day, so you’re never a few hours away from getting back to someone”. Does it drive her children mad? “They’ve grown up in this environment, and they’re vocal about what they need. If they say, ‘It’s really important that you come to my football match’, I’ll be there. My kids are super-easy, content human beings so they can’t be doing that badly despite everyone working quite hard.”

She’d love one of her three to start up their own company — “My eldest is keen, although I don’t think he realises how much work it is” — and says being an entrepreneur is “more about gumption than having a brilliant idea”.

On May 13, Green is talking to members of the Evening Standard’s small business and entrepreneurs’ network, Business Connections, about her start-up experiences. She found raising money to be “the most gruelling thing — you’re selling your soul”. “When Nails Inc launched, it was the dotcom era, everyone was investing in those female duos setting up online businesses, so I had to push hard to get backing.”

This year is Nails Inc’s 15th birthday, but Green is sticking around. “I’ve got no exit in mind,” she says. “The nail industry is booming now. An awful lot of nail polish brands have entered the market in the past two years and we want Nails Inc to continue to be a leader. We’re taking it up to the next level of luxury and giving our bottles that dressing-table feel, so we have just designed a new bottle with Fabien Baron, who designed Calvin Klein’s screw-top perfume and the Jean Paul Gaultier bustier bottle. We’ve gone for a heavy bottle, we want to make people proud to put them out on display.”

And then there is the US takeover. “The next project is taking our champagne nail bar to Manhattan. In the States, nail bars are still about speed and price. They’re pretty silent places where most staff don’t speak English. We’re taking something new back to the US — we’ve gone full circle.”

Thea Green talks to Business Connections members on Tuesday May 13 at the Emmanuel Centre, Marsham Street, SW1; doors open at 6.30pm. Tickets are free for members and a guest; annual membership is £50. standard.co.uk/businessconnections

FROM MAGS TO RICHES: FOUR EDI-PREDENEURS

Natalie Massenet

Massenet quit as Tatler fashion editor in 1998 to launch net-a-porter.com with her banker husband (now ex) Arnaud Massenet. It was valued at $530 million when private equity house Richemont bought the remaining shares in 2010.

Tamara Mellon

She was accessories editor at Vogue, where she first met cobbler Jimmy Choo. Mellon, below far left, built up shoe brand Jimmy Choo after receiving a £150,000 loan from her father, creating a reported £500 million business with 100 shops in 32 countries.

Vera Wang

A senior fashion editor at US Vogue, Wang, left, quit after being turned down for the editor-in-chief position currently occupied by Anna Wintour and joined Ralph Lauren as design director. Then she set up her own wedding gown business, whose customers include Victoria Beckham and Chelsea Clinton.

Kathy Phillips

After seven years at Vogue as health and beauty director, Phillips quit and launched natural beauty brand This Works in 2003. Now cult products include Skin Deep dry leg oil and Energy Bank bath and shower oil.

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