Nails.INC founder Thea Green: Don’t sweat the small stuff

Thea Green has grown up with her business, which she founded in the late 1990s. “For a long time I was the ‘young girl’ figure of my own business,” says Green, “because there were people much older than me in my business.”

Green, 49, founded Nails-INC, which specialises in nail care products, in her twenties.

“Now I’ve become the ‘mum’ figure of the business,” she says with a smile, changing the way she interacts with her staff. Age brings a more mature attitude to business, she finds, and this is what she wishes she could communicate to her younger self.

“One of the joys of age is that you don’t stress about anything so much any more. You don’t sweat the small stuff.” A sense of urgency powered her through in the early days of the business, but it could also take an emotional toll, she recalls. Green started out as a journalist specialising in fashion, but she spotted a gap in the market back in the late 1990s and decided to become an entrepreneur to grab her opportunity.

She noticed that nail bars were popular on the streets of New York, ideal for quick appointments. Back in the UK at that time, a visit to a nail specialist might just be reserved for a special occasion, like a wedding.

She brought nail bars to the UK high street during the height of the dot.com boom, when coffee shops were also beginning to populate our high streets. But her nail bars soon turned into showpiece concessions in department stores, like Fenwick’s and Selfridge’s. All the while, she was developing her own nail products, which her customers could purchase. These days, Nails.INC is in fact entirely a retail business, having just closed its final nail bar earlier this year.

Her products, like nail polish and varnish, have made Nails.INC a well-known UK brand in the US, where it generates nearly half its global $40m revenues. It gained recognition from its attention-grabbing collaborations, making nail products themed around food brands including Mangum ice creams, McDonald’s burgers, Fruit Loop breakfast cereals and Velveeta cheese. These outlandish partnerships got people talking, went viral and secured airtime on TV shows like USA Today, Green explains.

Last year, Nails.INC was acquired by private equity firm Pacific World Corporation in a reported £30m deal, but Green has remained at the helm to lead the company she founded.

She wants the business to capitalise on all the experience she has built up as a leader. “Most things that go wrong now,” says Green, “I’ve seen a version of it before, so I’m more relaxed.”