MELISSA: How do you decide when to expand into a new market?
JACLYN: You know, we get asked to come to a lot of different places, but right now, we still have opportunity in the markets where we are. You know, in New York, we have four locations, but we don’t have anything on the Upper East Side. So, right now, we’re still focused on where we live and making sure we have that deep presence and the customer in these major markets is really understanding us from an experienced point of view.
MELISSA: Is there anything in terms of interiors when you’re looking for or planning your spaces that you feel is a must-have and who makes these decisions?
JACLYN: We are three co-founders and we’re largely involved in everything, which is wonderful and also exhausting! The formula for the salons is we really try to fit into the landscape around us. We don’t have an out-of-the-box product that pops up and looks the same wherever we go. One salon will have a little bit more of a mid-century, modern, clean vibe, whereas when you go to Soho in New York, there’s a garden patio and it’s a little deconstructed compared to this. The strings of continuity lie in the services and the customer service. We do the same setup with the mani and pedi stations, so the furniture has a similar aesthetic. You can always feel that there’s a simple, unisex, and non-fussy sensibility in all of them. We don’t really have a set product we deliver in all salons. I think this makes it feel special. I think people want to feel like something is specific to their community. Community is so valuable always, especially in this time.
MELISSA: Tell me about how you name the polishes and when do you come up with new colors?
JACLYN: Aside from collaborations, the polishes had always been named after New York streets. We just did an amazing collaboration with Hatch, so we used names like ‘feisty mama’ and ‘poolside mama.’ We take the sensibility of the color and the street name together—so Church is a deep blood red. Every once in a while, we push to find a street that has a name that we have some connection to, but it doesn’t always work. We launch two to three collections a year and this depends on how many collaborations we have. This year, we did two collections for Ten Over Ten because we already have two collaborations. We’re never going to be doing neons that have formaldehyde or really sparkly glitters because it’s just not our sensibility. We do the colors based on ‘oh I saw this amazing color the other day and I would totally wear that, so it should be in our next collection.’ And when we’re in our salon and we see there’s a color constantly being used and it’s not ours, we’ll say ‘oh, there’s probably a need for that.’
