 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
The Back of the Hand: Vietnamese American Nail Salons
By Diu Hoang
12/15/06
The Vietnamese American community is highly concentrated in the nail salon industry, one of the fastest growing categories of Asian American businesses. Nails magazine estimates that Vietnamese hold 40% of the licenses nationally. Our intern, Diu Hoang, whose family owns a nail salon, offered to describe life in a salon – ed.
The holidays are here. Everyone wants to look good and pamper themselves. Customers come in and out of nail salons to get their nails manicured or buy gift certificates for their loved ones.
But what is the price of beauty? For customers, it’s $10 for a standard manicure and $25 a spa chair pedicure. Customers are impatient and often complain about the long wait during holiday season, when everyone is already short of time and temper.
But for the workers and owners of these nails salons- it’s long hours, low hourly pay, fierce competition from literally every corner of the block, and health problems from inhaling toxic chemicals such as acetone and acrylic on a daily basis. Let’s take a look at what the holidays mean for nail salon workers and owners by looking at my own family’s salon. Summer is the busiest season of the year; for the remainder of the year we get by, depending largely on business influx on key holidays and occasions- Thanksgiving, Christmas (where we sell more gift certificates than doing actual nails), New Year, Valentines Day, prom season and small celebrations in between. My family opens seven days a week from 9am-7pm (except Sundays from 10am-5pm). My mother takes no vacations and closes the salon not more than 3 days a year on Christmas, New Year, and Thanksgiving only because she knows business is poor on these days.
As an owner, my mom considers herself lucky that the business is doing pretty well. The market is already oversaturated with Vietnamese nail salons. Her position is more stable than that of an employee, without salary guarantees and benefits. She is lucky for someone of her age (54), who can no longer keep up with the younger workers. Younger workers do a manicure so fast, she says, they don’t even look at their customer’s hands. Their eyes are glued to the door, calculating how fast they can finish a manicure to take in the next customer. The competition is fierce outside and inside the salon.
