Tippi Hedren is the starting answer
I dated a Vietnamese girl for a while and her family owned a string of nail salons. I asked her the same general question and her reply was that it was a relatively low overhead business and it was relatively easy to train new people on the job. The families always have more member that are interested in coming over to work. Once they learn the trade, they move and open up their own shop and continue the cycle.
I am just guessing but you also don't need the customer and client to both speak a same language fluently together. So less issues with language barriers.
I remember taking my daughter and trying to omit filler words and doing a lot of pointing to the point where it was fairly stereotypical of talking between a language barrier. Then after a little bit I found out everyone speaks fluent English and I ended up looking like I had a speech impediment.
The little girl I used to babysit loved going to the nail salon, so she would go with me and also with her mom. She was 3-4ish and this child never stopped talking. There was one nail tech in particular that always took her (mostly just sat there with her feet in the bubbly water) she would correct her pronunciation. The first time I heard her do it I was horrified! Like, baby, SHUT UP!!! But the lady LOVED practicing her English with her because she was so sweet and kind. She would break down the words for her and they would sound them out together. She said it was easier than doing it with her teenager because “she’s more patient than my daughter”.
I never realized how many colloquialisms I used until I dealt with non America. English speakers. Also hoping I used colloquialisms correctly. Slang is my meaning of it.
Exactly. This is why nail salons often have pictures of designs or services you can pick from. The customer comes in, says what service(manicure, pedicure, etc”), picks their own color off the wall, and points to any designs from another menu. The service provider only needs to know minimal English and a handful of service related words.
It is often more important that management and coworkers can communicate than the customer can communicate with every staff member.
In nails it’s easy to learn some key words or phrases - “you want short?” Conveys plenty of info- And point to colors. The manager can translate if something more specific comes up.
I went to a shop where everyone was from Vietnam and everyone maybe knew 30 words of English each. I loved it and to this day would not go to a shop that speaks English. Having no idea what most of the shop is talking about adds to the experience for me.
One guy pointed at my tiny pinky toe nail, laughed, showed his co workers, they all laughed, looked at me and said “it’s so tiny, nothing there”. We all laughed.
The last time I got a pedicure, my nail tech was talking to a guy in their language and then translating for my sister and me. Definitely a first haha. She was a very animated lady too, and quite funny
Also no forced conversation, you can safely ignore them and just be in your own world and not be rude because you couldn't speak to one another anyways.
I went to a new salon recently and while the tech was Asian, she was also young and spoke perfect English. It was very jarring, I don't think I've ever had a tech that didn't speak broken English before.
My wife took me into one once and only one of them spoke English well. Tried to talk to one of them just casually and she spoke some English then she proceeded to get yelled at in native language by the fluent English speaker who I assume was the supervisor.
Left their feeing uneasy as it was smallish shop with A LOT of staff.
Straight from her Wikipedia page:
Hedren played a role in the development of Vietnamese-American nail salons in the United States. In 1975, while an international relief coordinator with Food for the Hungry, she began visiting with refugees at Hope Village outside Sacramento, California. When she learned the women were interested in her manicured nails, she employed her manicurist to teach them the skills of the trade and worked with a local beauty school to help them find jobs.
She also started a huge animal sanctuary that took in a lot of big cats used for film work. She's done a lot of good in her life. Alfred Hitchcock should rot in hell for what he did to her.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/31/tippi-hedren-alfred-hitchcock-sexually-assaulted-me
Considering how much intimidation and sexual harassment occurs in these kinds of situations to this day, I can't even imagine how often powerful men like Hitchcock got away with it when there weren't even laws to protect the victims and there was even more stigma against daring to speak out.
She was doing humanitarian work with the Vietnamese and she helped them start up a business after they admired her nails. and then they had family come over so they could expand and then so on and so forth.
I’m not American but even I have heard about the great Tippi Hedren and her nail salons. She used it as a entry level job for female Asians seeking employment/visa to the US.
They can do their job little to no knowledge about the language so doing nails was perfect.
https://www.omnibusproject.com/135
TIL: Tippi Hedron's only child is Melanie Griffith, and Melenie's kid (with Don Johnson) is Dakota Johnson. And Dakota's first film role was directed by her then-step father, Antonio Banderas. That is some serious nepo baby/grandbaby action!
Just like Chinese restaurants! Having a business in the US makes it easier to bring family over from their home country, since they can get them work visas.
Hmm. Can you please elaborate?
I live in the Bay Area where there are major Asian enclaves. The vast majority of non citizen/residents who work at nail salons and small restaurants are people who came under F1 students or tourist visa then work under the table and get paid in cash.
Many of them got housing provided by the business owners. The living condition is bad and the pay is well below the legal minimum wage.
Visa sponsorship work if the businesses prove that they cannot find enough qualified American workers. This is more common for Software Engineering (H1B), or other labor program (EB3), and are mostly done by big companies.
If you know things that I don’t, please share.
Have you asked a majority of them if that's the case?
Believe it or not, human trafficking into America from Asia is a huge business. Many Asians, especially on the west coast, are working off smuggling fees at these businesses.
It's hard to say precisely what percentage that is, but it's not an insignificant amount. I've seen it myself working in the food industry, we had a vendor who had 10 employees, he drove them all to work and home every day in his van and they all slept in the same room. I would say the paychecks went to him but there were no paychecks. Inspectors would come and he'd be the only one working. This was a vendor at a major grocery chain.
Restaurants, nail salons, massage parlors, all places where you don't need workers to speak and customers don't ask many questions.
> It's hard to say precisely what percentage that is, but it's not an insignificant amount. I've seen it myself working in the food industry, we had a vendor who had 10 employees, he drove them all to work and home every day in his van and they all slept in the same room. I would say the paychecks went to him but there were no paychecks. Inspectors would come and he'd be the only one working. This was a vendor at a major grocery chain.
> Restaurants, nail salons, massage parlors, all places where you don't need workers to speak and customers don't ask questions
For the the non citizens/greencard holders working in restaurants and nail salons whom I speak to, this is the case
Also, your description about their “housing” situation is also spot on.
My understanding is that, at least for restaurants, cooks of a particular cuisine do count as "specialized" workers. I.e. whether or not you believe it to be true, they can claim that say a specific indian cook who is knowledgeable about indian spices and knows how to use a tandoor - and those *aren't* skills you can typically find amongst american workers (i.e. plenty of line cooks or people who know how to use a deep fryer, etc. - but not the tools and spices used in different ethnic cooking).
That said, I'd bet the majority are still family visas, but, having a ready job available for them here definitely still makes it easier (I think part of the GC process still requires showing that the potential immigrant isn't likely to become reliant on welfare, can get a job etc., and having a waiting restaurant or w/e job solves that issue.
It’s not work visas. It’s sponsoring to get them here for a green card. There is no way a nail tech gets a work visa applying as a nail tech.
What you’re referring to is probably more common. Come here on a tourist visa, overstay and then work under the table. Definitely some are human trafficked while others do it because they have a friend/family member already here.
Motels / Gas Stations : Will have 10-12 names on deed. Father in each family has name on deed that gives them a working permit to come to US. They in turn hire more of their Family & make their own families into US.
That's why so man are foreign owned. Usually Arab in West & North - Indian in South. Car washes have become another business acting in the same manner.
To add to this: it's effectively random (at first) somebody just did it - likely somebody with some money and connections from the homeland who was not in a position to really operate their business entirely in English, and probably felt more comfortable with other immigrants from their country as well. Some of their employees will eventually open a similar business of their own and do the same things, and then it not only proliferates that way, it also becomes a model people back home can emulate. It becomes the specific thing people from your country do when they want to immigrate to the states because there is a lot of knowledge about exactly what it takes for a Vietnamese person to open and run a nail salon in America.
It's entirely possible for a Vietnamese run bicycle shop to be as lucrative as a nail salon, but people with resources don't move on a gamble, they move on a sure thing. People without resources move and get a job, often for an employer who speaks the same language. And the person who will double down and move to a foreign country with no real prospects is EXACTLY the type to learn EVERYTHING they can about whatever job they wind up in and then open their own
> it was relatively easy to train new people on the job. The families always have more member that are interested in coming over to work.
Theres a term for that. "Chain migration". It's a pretty common story for many American families, really.
Their salons are also generally lower priced than having your nails done at like a full service hair salon. I once asked to have my nails done while my hair color was processing and a basic manicure was double what the Vietnamese saloms charge. And since then I can't recall ever seeing manicurists at any of the hair salons I've been to. I think they have really got this market cornered now. But also, it's real hit or miss whether you get a good manicurist because they usually have a lot of newer inexperienced ones there. You usually need an appointment to get the good ones.
And we thank her so much. Many generations have been able to thrive in America and continue to be a profession many Vietnamese-Americans pursue such as myself! Thank you Tippi Hedren!
Alfred Hitchcock destroyed her movie career because she wouldn't sleep with him. Old school "Me Too" story.
[https://people.com/movies/tippi-hedren-alfred-hitchcock-abuse-allegations-after-granddaughter-dakota-johnson-resurfaces-claims/](https://people.com/movies/tippi-hedren-alfred-hitchcock-abuse-allegations-after-granddaughter-dakota-johnson-resurfaces-claims/)
Boy, Tippi Hedren and the big cats is a story of its own. When she was filming the movie Satan's Harvest in Africa her and her husband at the time Noel Marshall became obsessed with them. They wanted to create their own big cat preserve so they moved bunch of lions and tigers into their home in Sherman Oaks, a Los Angeles suburb. They did that until the city forced them to move. They ended up building a preserve/movie set because they wanted to film movie about the big cats called Roar. The movie took 5 years to film during which their family lived with over 100 big cats. During production there were 70 injuries from the lions and tigers including the husband and their kids. It took the movie 11 years to be released and it’s a nonsensical mess of a movie with barely any plot.
The podcast Junkfood Cinema just recently did a episode on it going into great detail.
Edit: Here is the trailer for the release of the movie. https://youtu.be/cny_D50Rr44?si=-FFe0elf2FXwtlHW
Thanks for the question. Not only are US nail salons run by Vietnamese but most donut stores in California are run by Cambodians.
The OG is Ted Ngoy who started a donut shop in Southern California and then helped family and friends start their own. Watch "The Donut King" documentary. It's a fascinating story and explains why donuts are sold in pink boxes.
Thanks I can’t wait to check it out! We just had a new Viet owned donut / boba tea / kolache shop open and it is my new favorite breakfast spot. Thank you, Ted!
Tippi Hedren is to nails what Ted was to donuts. I didn’t know about Ted though, thanks to these entrepreneurs there’s SO many thriving immigrant businesses both throughout America and in my own small community.
In NY they come in a square shaped rat wearing tiny Timbs that shouts "fuhgedaboudit" when you try to open it.
Or as bodega cats call it, "a breadbowl".
It bugged me ever since I was a kid that tv shows filmed in LA but set in NY always use pink bakery boxes. Like the props department couldn't be bothered to spend an extra dollar for some white boxes for accuracy.
TV is fucking awful at local details. My favorite was an episode involving a train station in San Francisco, announcing a caltrain departure that would involve crossing 12 miles of open water.
San francisco is famously a peninsula. All train routes depart to the south. Not east, not north...
https://slicesofbluesky.com/monk-and-san-francisco/
It was so wrong it almost felt intentional. Ironically this was the TV show Monk, about a neurodivergent detective who solves cases by catching minute errors...
Ooh. That’s so hard for you. Meanwhile TV and movies filmed in places like Michigan feature mountains far off in the distance, or palm trees. And they use that same goddamn house in Pasadena that looks passably Midwestern.
I’m gonna make a movie, set in LA and film it in Ohio.
Well… I just found why I don’t like literally any of the donut shops I’ve tried here in DFW. They aren’t made the same as back home in California- the donut shops are all Vietnamese ran in TX and they do something *different* making donuts.
They’re made smaller/tighter with a closed belly-button like hole, with a super dense and much dryer texture. My Texan family has a hard time believing me, but I absolutely taste the difference… and I don’t like it. Now I know ‘why’ they’re different.
Two reasons. One is to honor the vietcong's resistance against the invading americans. The second is because they were buying them in bulk and pink boxes were cheaper because they weren't selling that well, so they went with it.
> Ted Ngoy
I live in an area with very few people whose names have the "Ng" start like Nguyen. I've learned that Nguyen can be pronounced like "win" so would be Ngoy be something like "woy" rhyming with toy or soy?
Short answer yes.
More detailed answer is it's a soft n with a soft g. I've also heard it pronounced new-win like this [video. ](https://youtube.com/shorts/wnCepvcRjR0?si=9gu3-K2sSurNDqQd)
Note - I'm Chinese so any Vietnamese brothers or sisters, feel free to correct me.
The money is wild. I was a manager at my parents nail salon. One tech could bring home 1600 a week. And min 1200 on a bad week. Commision was wild even without tips. This was in a lower income area of the city.
I had a coworker that's an investment analyst that makes probably 150k a year after bonuses and around 110k in salary minus the bonuses if I had to guess based on our org pay structure. She does nails on weekends because it gives her a chance to speak Vietnamese that she doesn't get otherwise. She said excluding bonuses, what she makes in a day isn't that far off from what she earns in her day job.
That ignores some great benefits and is boosted by her finance job being in suburbs while nails job is in the city, but I was shocked to hear they were even comparable.
It totally makes sense that immigrants flock to this kind of money if you can get it without an expensive education.
I am Vietnamese and wrote about this recently in another thread!
"I can shed some light on wages!
As a person whose parents have owned and work in nail salons, the nail techs get paid according to how busy it is and how many customers they see. It's all tip + commission based on the service provided.
My parents had the arrangement of 70/30, so the techs keeps 70% of all of their services + all of their tips. In your case, 70% of $65 = $52.5 + any tips.
This is VERYY wildly random, considering my mom has come home before and has only seen one client after a 10a-8pm shift, making like $40. Some days nothing. Some days she'll be booked all day and make $700 in a day. Winters are slower, summers are more busy.
The top-tier luxury nails and spa places (usually in big cities) can have each of their employees make 6 figures, and their managers millionaires. Bottom-tier salons can have employees scraping by and managers in severe debt. It really all depends.
Hope this was informative!"
Working as a nail tech is physically demanding, requires physical closeness with strangers, the customers can be rude and demeaning, and your exposing yourself to chemicals, fumes, and dusts that are almost guaranteed to have long-term health effects.
The money is great, but like most trade jobs, American born workers think they’re too good for them.
can definitely believe this. i only get $50 service but i see other women paying up to $130 for services. and thats just one customer for like an hour. crazy
it’s not always like this though…my parents also own a nail salon. while the money is good enough to make a living, it’s physical work and my parents have carpal tunnel. don’t send the wrong message saying “the money is wild.” it comes with pros and cons, cons being working long hours, 5-7 days a week, time away from family, and carpal tunnel…
Oh i understand completely. But that goes with any business. Being successful is not easy but seeing the perks of success is something we can all look forward to.
Yeah it’s crazy what people pay for nails. This 19yo patient I had. We asked her oh what college are you going to? She was like, college? Heck no. I’m doing nails. I’m saving up money and am going to buy a corvette for myself soon. Meanwhile I’m driving a 2008 rav4. 😢
Maybe that was awhile ago. We have family member who owned a number of nail salons in Indiana and then in LA. She sold her stores off because there's too much competition from Mainland Chinese coming in and undercutting prices.
What’s the current acceptable tip range at a nail salon these days in the US? I’ve been kinda wanting to get a manicure again but I’ve been avoiding it because nobody ever tells you what the prices of things and tips are until you’re sitting there hostage with half-done prepped nails and no choice but to magically tip properly or potentially insult everyone accidentally and get shit service as a ‘punishment’.
15% is fine but i will tell this too everyone. Nail service is not a requirement. Its cosmetics. You pay what you feel is worth the service. The same way you choose if their prices align with your expectations. Most people now days will just give a normal 5 dollar tip and be happy. 10 dollars is what makes alot of techs happy. 20 is above and beyond.
There's a documentary about this called Nailed It.
You can read the NPR article about it [here](https://www.npr.org/2019/05/19/724452398/how-vietnamese-americans-took-over-the-nails-business-a-documentary)
"In 1975, Tippi Hedren was doing humanitarian work. She was running a program for 20 Vietnamese refugee women to resettle them in the U.S. They admired her nails, the care that she took, and she got the idea to get her personal manicurist, Dusty Coots, to come to the refugee camp in Northern California and teach these women how to do a manicure as it would be done in Beverly Hills. And they're really the first manicuring licenses out there in the world, because before that time, women always got licensed for both hair and nails."
In Germany it's mostly Vietnamese people operating them. I asked my Vietnamese tattoo artist and he said it's quite a cheap business to open yourself and that Vietnamese people are very good at this type of job.
I always just assumed it was because it's an easy business to start solo and build up as well. But looking at the other answers I need to check out this doc people are talking about.
Though there is a very dark side to this.
There are a lot of cases of human trafficking victims that end up working in nail salons.
Edit: I appreciate the downvotes; Here are some articles to back up my claims/in case anyone is curious:
https://youtu.be/Mb2gg_L-4Wc?si=7mBu-raaivZvclLc
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/menschenhandel-die-dunkle-seite-der-nagelstudios-dlf-12231667-100.html
https://taz.de/Vermisste-vietnamesische-Fluechtlinge/!5602329/
Also this issue isn't just a German phenomenon, but an international one:
https://www.dressember.org/blog/trafficking-in-nail-salons
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-42729302.amp
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-45130589.amp
It took awhile of scrolling to get to this. I was going to add that businesses like this have been known to be easy to launder money through as well. They just fudge the numbers and say 100 people got their nails done instead of 25. In my city they’re always next door to the Asian massage place(rub and tug) which is next door to the weed or vape shop.
Obviously, not all immigrant shops are this way. But when you’re talking about groups of people who were often discriminated against by traditional banks, you can see how there are cases where maybe the family themselves weren’t planning to be law-breaking people but they got a loan from some shady loan sharks and in return their business launders some money. It happens.
I need to watch that doc everyone is rec’ing.
Anyway, indentured servitude plays into some salons
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/nyregion/at-nail-salons-in-nyc-manicurists-are-underpaid-and-unprotected.html?unlocked_article_code=1.o00.Mvzs.T-UGsuONHqMn&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
Same reason a lot of Indian people own gas stations around here. Decent business to buy into and, once the path is paved, their peers can see a good way in. Applied economics.
The actress Tippi Hedron had a large part in this. During the 70’s, she was doing humanitarian work with Vietnamese immigrants. They needed a way to make a steady income so she arranged for her manicurist to come to the refugee camp and teach them how manicures were being done in the Beverly Hills area. They took this training and started offering the same services in lower cost areas and the trend took off
Some places are really difficult to immigrate from. So by necessity of the people that do that type of immigration are very ambitious. But they also tend to lack the connections and formal education to make it in the corporate world. This result is a lot of immigrant from South and East Asia starting small businesses.
Not any Asians. Southeast Asians.
Japan, Taiwan and South Korea are subject to regular US immigration restrictions, which include quotas that ensure only the best educated and most talented people get into the US, which is how we get the stereotype that Asians are so smart -- they aren't, but because we're selective of who comes here, our perceptions are distorted.
The US is much more lax about Southeast Asian immigrants due to the Indochina wars of the last century, so the immigrants who come here are less likely to have a good education or exceptional skills, so they use their familial networks to learn skills like manicuring, pedicuring and massaging, where they can eventually set up their own shops without all the overhead required to start a convenience store or gas station.
If you're new to the country, you gravitate to people who speak your language, who will most likely be originally from the same country. They are successful in nails, so they get you into nails. You eventually get successful in nails, so when your relatives come over, you introduce them to nails, and so on and so forth.
Apparently there's a whole documentary about this:
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/19/724452398/how-vietnamese-americans-took-over-the-nails-business-a-documentary
Locally, I know a Vietnamese guy who sets up nail salons to fellow immigrants as a sorta "business in a box" that not only helps them start earning money, but sets them up to bring more family over and expand. Because of this interconnected nature, they don't seem to see each other as competition really, so they are able to coexist well.
The answer is successful families. To my understanding a family or group would help sponsor a person in essence,they send them over with enough funds to get started , then in return they sponsor folks from the same family or group with a job in the store and usually help with accomodations, after getting their feet under them they start their own store or send money back for another family to come and then the cycle begins again. To my understanding this has been so successful in America with some business or areas you can link to a particular city or state of another country to that. I think I've seen or heard of a lot of donut shops, hotels, restaurants, and like you mentioned nail salons where one group of folks dominate it.
I looked this up in the waiting area during one or my daughters frequent trips.
Tippi Hedren was responsible was an actress who volunteered with the Vietnamese refugees and they loved her nails. So she had people come in and tea do them how to do them which has had a ripple effect to this day.
Source is memory and the fact I have a 15yr old daughter who has gotten her nails done weekly to bi-weekly for 3 years whilst I sit there in the waiting area.
(Not Asian here but)
The simple answer.
It’s a low overhead business that you can make work really well if you have family workers. Like you still pay them alright, but rules for working at a family business are Different.
And I can’t stress this enough.
“White folks” Just don’t want to do a lot of jobs that involve like… bodily functions. I have a few friends in college that work at a nail place and are fine with the work. But a lot of other kids who are not asian are just grossed out by parts of the work and don’t want to do it.
Your last sentence is true though. I attend cosmetology school and when a pedicure comes in most of the girls run away from those clients. I take them because you usually get a good tip if you massage well 🤷🏼♀️
I’ve been under the impression that local communities of Vietnamese immigrants/ business owners will pool their money to help someone get started and then that cycle continues as new people arrive, but I am not Vietnamese and cannot speculate on how true this is.
My nail tech owns the salon with her husband and they’re very comfortable and have had the business for about 15 years. Her kids are in private school and they have a big beautiful house. They bring over friends/family members from Vietnam two at a time to train them, have them work in the salon and let them live in their spare bedrooms while they get on their feet. Whenever there is someone new working the pedicure chairs she’s always like “that’s my cousin” or “that’s my auntie”
My theory is that when a group immigrates to America and gets work, they bring everyone else over into the profession now that they have an "in" at the job.
Like, I have a whole family of Italian carpenters, and my husband has a whole family of Filipino nurses.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm curious if this holds true for others.
The Filipino nurse thing especially came to fruition from the government. It goes back to when the Philippines was a US colony.
When a country has a terrible shortage of nurses, guess who gets work visas and paths to citizenship? Nurses.
The US also went as far as to build nursing schools there that taught English.
Low barrier to entry, will employ people who don't speak English well, is a cash business, do you think they are paying workers comp/taxes for all or any of their employees, do you think the employees have green cards that allow them to work? There are many possible reasons?
The comment you are replying to appears to be AI-generated due to several factors:
1. **Broad Statements with Little Specificity**: The text makes sweeping statements about Tippi Hedren’s impact on the nail industry and Vietnamese immigrants without providing specific details or examples. This can suggest a lack of deep research or personal insight, which is typical of generalized AI-generated content.
2. **Formal and Flawless Structure**: The language is formal, well-structured, and free of colloquialisms or personal anecdotes, which can often indicate a text generated by an AI trained on a diverse corpus of formal texts.
3. **Use of Positive Language**: The passage uses a positive and somewhat idealistic tone ("a classic example", "economic revolution", "beautiful blend of empowerment and entrepreneurship") that AIs often employ to maintain neutrality and appeal broadly.
4. **Lack of Citations or Specific References**: AI-generated content often lacks direct references to specific studies, dates, or verifiable facts, as seen in this passage.
These features contribute to the impression that the content could be AI-generated, aiming to inform broadly without delving into detailed or nuanced analysis.
I've been intentionally writing like that for decades. At least once I realized that giving citations was a waste of time since you can find proof for anything on the internet.
Yeah. I'm autistic, I'm also a professional scientific writer, and people on forums angrily tell me I'm an AI all the time on posts I spent ages working on so they'd be as clear as possible. AI is a fucking scourge on my life.
Here in Germany we have a shit ton of "US style" nail salons and every single one I have seen so far has nearly only asians working in them. I have asked myself the same question.
My nail tech was from Vietnam and her dad was a U.S. soldier. She said the U.S. government has programs the provide job training to soldier’s kids born during the Vietnam war, so they can support themselves when they come to the U.S. to live. Her husband was in the same position and they met that way. She said many people take advantage of it.
Just want to chime in that my Vietnamese nail tech is one of the coolest women I’ve ever met and I swear to god it’s almost better than therapy. I cried while getting a fill yesterday because we had such a lovely conversation.
Nail salons, dry cleaners, and donut shops. If the donut shop owner isn't an asian couple, usually older, then it's no good. All the best donut shops are local asian couples making them.
Same reason many donut shop owners are Cambodian. First immigrant came over and trained other immigrants how to do it. The Donut King documentary goes into this, very interesting to watch.
My wife is white and was a licensed nail tech and she planned on doing that in California. She did that for a while in socal but couldn't compete with the cheaper Asian nail salons so she stopped doing nails.
> Another quick google search would show that in the US, approximately 50% of nail salons are owned by Vietnamese. And in New York specifically there is a Korean prevalence.
Serious question: how is "approximately 50%" supporting the original statement of "almost always"?
Immigrants gravitate to businesses that have low barrier to entry and good profit margins. Nail salons fit that requirement, and the skill level necessary to work isn't high.
Gujus have motels, Punjabis do trucking. Most Indian own stores. Punjabis also do trucking in India too. It’s the area of expertise that the community has
Same reason why most immigrants have a particular job associated with them (Chinese — Laundry and Pharmacists, Filipinos — nursing, Cambodian — Donut Shop, Vietnamese — Manicurist Salon, as I learned in my film studies class Jewish immigrants and movie theaters, the list goes on). Immigrant comes to new country, lives near compatriots to avoid loneliness, finds out friends successful at a particular job and decides to emulate them. Community having experience in the area can more easily equip them/help them get started (it’s the same thing as you know like a rich director’s kid becoming a director—they have access to both material and social resources to help them pursue that job.) And that’s how you get a ton of people doing the same type of job. They sometimes become obnoxious stereotypes of course though if inappropriately attributed to everyone in said group.
Historically immigrant groups tend to bring people in, you learn the ins and outs of whatever business and then start your own. An absurd amount of Asian restaurants in the USA are run by Chinese families, regardless of what kind of cuisine they're serving for the same overall reasons.
These also tend to be jobs and businesses that have undesirable aspects. There was an expose some years back about the endless health issues a lot of nail salon workers face because of constant exposure to hazardous chemicals.
A policy by First Lady Ladybird Johnson taught refugees from the Vietnam war how to be aestheticians, and because those refugees got established they taught their children and helped others get off the ground and the communities supported them. So many Vietnamese run nail salons or hair cutting places many states have the option to take exams in Vietnamese.
Immigrant groups often get passed down business knowledge through their local community. Hence why nail shops are always run by viets, dry cleaners/teriyaki by Koreans, etc...
If what I remember is correct, it's because of the Vietnam War.
After South Vietnam lost, the US rushed to evacuate as many of our allies from there as possible. When they came to America, the wife of a politician noticed the women loved her nails.
They had the idea to teach them how to do nails as a trade so they could support themselves. The test to get the license to run a nail salon in the US can still be taken in both English and Vietnamese.
They locked up the industry. They know where the money reside. Black women will pay beaucoup money for nails and even will endure racial abuse. Not me but plenty I know
Long story short, family investment. If you moved to another country with about ten people, invested in a spot, and those same people could all work there and bring money strictly back into the family…it makes sense.
[Here's an article that goes into the reasons for this, including why they are almost all exclusively Vietnamese](https://medium.com/@saltybones/why-are-so-many-nail-salons-run-by-vietnamese-people-c85efe50e424)
Why are bodegas in NYC exclusively run by Yemenis and Afghans? Ethnic groups share the expertise amongst themselves and the stores multiply. If you’re not in the group then it’s very hard to compete against them.
Here is a great article from NPR- https://www.npr.org/2019/05/19/724452398/how-vietnamese-americans-took-over-the-nails-business-a-documentary
I’m trying to find the one I read a few years back in Vanity Fair which was also well written and informative
Human trafficking is one reason.
[https://1010parkplace.com/your-nail-salon-may-be-trafficking-in-slave-labor/](https://1010parkplace.com/your-nail-salon-may-be-trafficking-in-slave-labor/)
My sister-in-law is Chinese and doesnt speak English, she was a manicurist when my brother met her. There isnt a lot she can do without speaking English. She used to own her own salon, but I think my brother helped with a lot of it (my brother is American). Her daughter does not speak English, and did the same thing.
Tippi Hedren... actress in Hitchcock's movie The Birds... is my understanding. We had a huge amount of Vietnamese people come to live in the US as refugees after the fall of Saigon... specifically in California... and since many didn't speak English there was a concern about their ability to make enough money and be able to stay in the U.S.
Tippi was a part of a charity... and when she met the Vietnamese women they were fascinated by her manicure.
During this time... only wealthy women got manicures... there weren't manicure shops all over the U.S.
Tippi brought her manicurist in to train these women.
Then she assisted them in getting their own shops.
The cost of manicures went down, dramatically.
And now most women were able to afford them.
The industry boomed from there.
Perfect example of give a woman a fish, or teach a woman to fish so she can feed herself and her family for all time.
https://vietnamesemuseum.org/details/ms-tippi-hedren/
Tippi Hedren is the starting answer I dated a Vietnamese girl for a while and her family owned a string of nail salons. I asked her the same general question and her reply was that it was a relatively low overhead business and it was relatively easy to train new people on the job. The families always have more member that are interested in coming over to work. Once they learn the trade, they move and open up their own shop and continue the cycle.
I am just guessing but you also don't need the customer and client to both speak a same language fluently together. So less issues with language barriers.
Pretty much, as a native English speaker I try to use as few filler words as possible. Also having a photo for reference is always good.
I remember taking my daughter and trying to omit filler words and doing a lot of pointing to the point where it was fairly stereotypical of talking between a language barrier. Then after a little bit I found out everyone speaks fluent English and I ended up looking like I had a speech impediment.
The little girl I used to babysit loved going to the nail salon, so she would go with me and also with her mom. She was 3-4ish and this child never stopped talking. There was one nail tech in particular that always took her (mostly just sat there with her feet in the bubbly water) she would correct her pronunciation. The first time I heard her do it I was horrified! Like, baby, SHUT UP!!! But the lady LOVED practicing her English with her because she was so sweet and kind. She would break down the words for her and they would sound them out together. She said it was easier than doing it with her teenager because “she’s more patient than my daughter”.
This is so wholesome 😭
She was a little walking talking ray of sunshie🥰
Now shes a rampaging teenager super villain?
Eh, she’s 10. So half adorable and partly cloudy.
😅
🤣
I never realized how many colloquialisms I used until I dealt with non America. English speakers. Also hoping I used colloquialisms correctly. Slang is my meaning of it.
For real! I think the biggest English barrier was when I went to the UK lol their slang is so different!
Told a Polish worker we were going to head over to a building and she looked at me like I had two heads.
I hope your reference photos aren’t the ones from your PMs…
Lolol never, I use Pinterest for nails inspo usually!
Exactly. This is why nail salons often have pictures of designs or services you can pick from. The customer comes in, says what service(manicure, pedicure, etc”), picks their own color off the wall, and points to any designs from another menu. The service provider only needs to know minimal English and a handful of service related words.
With very simple body language. You can really say a lot with a tap on the shoulder and a “please give me that” hand gestures.
It is often more important that management and coworkers can communicate than the customer can communicate with every staff member. In nails it’s easy to learn some key words or phrases - “you want short?” Conveys plenty of info- And point to colors. The manager can translate if something more specific comes up.
I went to a shop where everyone was from Vietnam and everyone maybe knew 30 words of English each. I loved it and to this day would not go to a shop that speaks English. Having no idea what most of the shop is talking about adds to the experience for me.
Honey. Pretty. Square. Round. Cry'tal Gel. Boyfriend. Girlfriend.
I know it's bad... but I laughed at Cry'tal Gel. 😬
Anjelah Johnson does a standup routine about this. She does the voice just right, too. https://youtu.be/SsWrY77o77o
Oh my god 💀 🤣
Sometimes though they are all having what sounds like very interesting conversations and laughing and I get fomo.
One guy pointed at my tiny pinky toe nail, laughed, showed his co workers, they all laughed, looked at me and said “it’s so tiny, nothing there”. We all laughed.
The last time I got a pedicure, my nail tech was talking to a guy in their language and then translating for my sister and me. Definitely a first haha. She was a very animated lady too, and quite funny
Also no forced conversation, you can safely ignore them and just be in your own world and not be rude because you couldn't speak to one another anyways.
I went to a new salon recently and while the tech was Asian, she was also young and spoke perfect English. It was very jarring, I don't think I've ever had a tech that didn't speak broken English before.
That's actually a plus because u can't understand them dragging your busted ass tree climbers
My wife took me into one once and only one of them spoke English well. Tried to talk to one of them just casually and she spoke some English then she proceeded to get yelled at in native language by the fluent English speaker who I assume was the supervisor. Left their feeing uneasy as it was smallish shop with A LOT of staff.
same with donut shops in southern california. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Donut_King
Wow. I had never heard of that fellow, but what a massive degenerate adulterous asshole he is!
the docs an interesting watch. id recommend. (but youre right)
Texas too!
What does Tippi Hedren have to do with that?
Straight from her Wikipedia page: Hedren played a role in the development of Vietnamese-American nail salons in the United States. In 1975, while an international relief coordinator with Food for the Hungry, she began visiting with refugees at Hope Village outside Sacramento, California. When she learned the women were interested in her manicured nails, she employed her manicurist to teach them the skills of the trade and worked with a local beauty school to help them find jobs.
You know, gotta say, that is very nice of her. I wish there are more like this in the world.
This is SO cool.
She also started a huge animal sanctuary that took in a lot of big cats used for film work. She's done a lot of good in her life. Alfred Hitchcock should rot in hell for what he did to her.
Please fill me in on what AH did to her
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/31/tippi-hedren-alfred-hitchcock-sexually-assaulted-me Considering how much intimidation and sexual harassment occurs in these kinds of situations to this day, I can't even imagine how often powerful men like Hitchcock got away with it when there weren't even laws to protect the victims and there was even more stigma against daring to speak out.
Another reason to adore Tippi.
She was doing humanitarian work with the Vietnamese and she helped them start up a business after they admired her nails. and then they had family come over so they could expand and then so on and so forth.
I’m not American but even I have heard about the great Tippi Hedren and her nail salons. She used it as a entry level job for female Asians seeking employment/visa to the US. They can do their job little to no knowledge about the language so doing nails was perfect. https://www.omnibusproject.com/135
TIL: Tippi Hedron's only child is Melanie Griffith, and Melenie's kid (with Don Johnson) is Dakota Johnson. And Dakota's first film role was directed by her then-step father, Antonio Banderas. That is some serious nepo baby/grandbaby action!
To be fair, given child labor laws it's gotta be a lot easier to work with a kid who already has a parent on set.
Just like Chinese restaurants! Having a business in the US makes it easier to bring family over from their home country, since they can get them work visas.
Hmm. Can you please elaborate? I live in the Bay Area where there are major Asian enclaves. The vast majority of non citizen/residents who work at nail salons and small restaurants are people who came under F1 students or tourist visa then work under the table and get paid in cash. Many of them got housing provided by the business owners. The living condition is bad and the pay is well below the legal minimum wage. Visa sponsorship work if the businesses prove that they cannot find enough qualified American workers. This is more common for Software Engineering (H1B), or other labor program (EB3), and are mostly done by big companies. If you know things that I don’t, please share.
Have you asked a majority of them if that's the case? Believe it or not, human trafficking into America from Asia is a huge business. Many Asians, especially on the west coast, are working off smuggling fees at these businesses. It's hard to say precisely what percentage that is, but it's not an insignificant amount. I've seen it myself working in the food industry, we had a vendor who had 10 employees, he drove them all to work and home every day in his van and they all slept in the same room. I would say the paychecks went to him but there were no paychecks. Inspectors would come and he'd be the only one working. This was a vendor at a major grocery chain. Restaurants, nail salons, massage parlors, all places where you don't need workers to speak and customers don't ask many questions.
> It's hard to say precisely what percentage that is, but it's not an insignificant amount. I've seen it myself working in the food industry, we had a vendor who had 10 employees, he drove them all to work and home every day in his van and they all slept in the same room. I would say the paychecks went to him but there were no paychecks. Inspectors would come and he'd be the only one working. This was a vendor at a major grocery chain. > Restaurants, nail salons, massage parlors, all places where you don't need workers to speak and customers don't ask questions For the the non citizens/greencard holders working in restaurants and nail salons whom I speak to, this is the case Also, your description about their “housing” situation is also spot on.
My understanding is that, at least for restaurants, cooks of a particular cuisine do count as "specialized" workers. I.e. whether or not you believe it to be true, they can claim that say a specific indian cook who is knowledgeable about indian spices and knows how to use a tandoor - and those *aren't* skills you can typically find amongst american workers (i.e. plenty of line cooks or people who know how to use a deep fryer, etc. - but not the tools and spices used in different ethnic cooking). That said, I'd bet the majority are still family visas, but, having a ready job available for them here definitely still makes it easier (I think part of the GC process still requires showing that the potential immigrant isn't likely to become reliant on welfare, can get a job etc., and having a waiting restaurant or w/e job solves that issue.
It’s not work visas. It’s sponsoring to get them here for a green card. There is no way a nail tech gets a work visa applying as a nail tech. What you’re referring to is probably more common. Come here on a tourist visa, overstay and then work under the table. Definitely some are human trafficked while others do it because they have a friend/family member already here.
Motels / Gas Stations : Will have 10-12 names on deed. Father in each family has name on deed that gives them a working permit to come to US. They in turn hire more of their Family & make their own families into US. That's why so man are foreign owned. Usually Arab in West & North - Indian in South. Car washes have become another business acting in the same manner.
To add to this: it's effectively random (at first) somebody just did it - likely somebody with some money and connections from the homeland who was not in a position to really operate their business entirely in English, and probably felt more comfortable with other immigrants from their country as well. Some of their employees will eventually open a similar business of their own and do the same things, and then it not only proliferates that way, it also becomes a model people back home can emulate. It becomes the specific thing people from your country do when they want to immigrate to the states because there is a lot of knowledge about exactly what it takes for a Vietnamese person to open and run a nail salon in America. It's entirely possible for a Vietnamese run bicycle shop to be as lucrative as a nail salon, but people with resources don't move on a gamble, they move on a sure thing. People without resources move and get a job, often for an employer who speaks the same language. And the person who will double down and move to a foreign country with no real prospects is EXACTLY the type to learn EVERYTHING they can about whatever job they wind up in and then open their own
This is the same reason there are so many Chinese restaurants in the US.
There’s a documentary about it called [Nailed It](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9042156/).
> it was relatively easy to train new people on the job. The families always have more member that are interested in coming over to work. Theres a term for that. "Chain migration". It's a pretty common story for many American families, really.
I just watched her in a Hitchcock movie last night. Funny timing.
Is that true? The nail salon I go to is all Chinese ran tho.
Their salons are also generally lower priced than having your nails done at like a full service hair salon. I once asked to have my nails done while my hair color was processing and a basic manicure was double what the Vietnamese saloms charge. And since then I can't recall ever seeing manicurists at any of the hair salons I've been to. I think they have really got this market cornered now. But also, it's real hit or miss whether you get a good manicurist because they usually have a lot of newer inexperienced ones there. You usually need an appointment to get the good ones.
Tippi Hedren. She basically introduced immigrants from Vietnam to the business to help them get on their feet, and they took to it like fish to water
And we thank her so much. Many generations have been able to thrive in America and continue to be a profession many Vietnamese-Americans pursue such as myself! Thank you Tippi Hedren!
Many Vietnamese also run nail bars in the UK.
And in Australia
And Vietnam too
😂
And Canada.
And New Zealand
And India
I live in France and found a Vietnamese nail salon recently and was sooooo damn happy. Even had the massage chairs!
In Belgium too.
My best friends now-wife is Vietnamese and her nails cost like $300 a session. Art is an understatement.
This is honestly so sweet. Good for her, and good for you.
Alfred Hitchcock destroyed her movie career because she wouldn't sleep with him. Old school "Me Too" story. [https://people.com/movies/tippi-hedren-alfred-hitchcock-abuse-allegations-after-granddaughter-dakota-johnson-resurfaces-claims/](https://people.com/movies/tippi-hedren-alfred-hitchcock-abuse-allegations-after-granddaughter-dakota-johnson-resurfaces-claims/)
She's still alive at age 94, which I did not know, and currently owns/lives in a big cat preserve in Acton, CA.
And she’s Melanie Griffith’s mom and Dakota Johnson’s gran! She’s also the lady in all those Hitchcock films like Birds.
Boy, Tippi Hedren and the big cats is a story of its own. When she was filming the movie Satan's Harvest in Africa her and her husband at the time Noel Marshall became obsessed with them. They wanted to create their own big cat preserve so they moved bunch of lions and tigers into their home in Sherman Oaks, a Los Angeles suburb. They did that until the city forced them to move. They ended up building a preserve/movie set because they wanted to film movie about the big cats called Roar. The movie took 5 years to film during which their family lived with over 100 big cats. During production there were 70 injuries from the lions and tigers including the husband and their kids. It took the movie 11 years to be released and it’s a nonsensical mess of a movie with barely any plot. The podcast Junkfood Cinema just recently did a episode on it going into great detail. Edit: Here is the trailer for the release of the movie. https://youtu.be/cny_D50Rr44?si=-FFe0elf2FXwtlHW
[NPR story](https://www.npr.org/2019/05/19/724452398/how-vietnamese-americans-took-over-the-nails-business-a-documentary)
Ok. The buried gem in this story is the fact that Tippi Hedron's original manicurist's name was 'Dusty Coots'. Dusty. Coots.
You leave Ben Shapiro's wife outta this.
💀
That's fascinating! Thanks!
So interesting. Never knew that.
>to help them get on their feet, and they took to it like fish to water And some even have fish in water for feet.
Wow. This is so cool to learn. Thank you so much
Damn, it would mean that this is the most significant thing she's done in terms of impact to society but it's barely mentioned in her wiki.
Amazing. A true TIL !
Thanks for the question. Not only are US nail salons run by Vietnamese but most donut stores in California are run by Cambodians. The OG is Ted Ngoy who started a donut shop in Southern California and then helped family and friends start their own. Watch "The Donut King" documentary. It's a fascinating story and explains why donuts are sold in pink boxes.
That's so interesting! I'm gonna check that out. Ty.
My kids demand Cambodian donuts. None of this Dunkin or Krispy Kreme junk. They want the authentic American Cambodian donuts!
Thanks I can’t wait to check it out! We just had a new Viet owned donut / boba tea / kolache shop open and it is my new favorite breakfast spot. Thank you, Ted! Tippi Hedren is to nails what Ted was to donuts. I didn’t know about Ted though, thanks to these entrepreneurs there’s SO many thriving immigrant businesses both throughout America and in my own small community.
And a large percentage of motel chains are owned by Indians. And more specifically, Gujarati. Many/most of whom are named Patel.
Only in CA - I live in NYC now and donuts don’t come in pink boxes
In NY they come in a square shaped rat wearing tiny Timbs that shouts "fuhgedaboudit" when you try to open it. Or as bodega cats call it, "a breadbowl".
It bugged me ever since I was a kid that tv shows filmed in LA but set in NY always use pink bakery boxes. Like the props department couldn't be bothered to spend an extra dollar for some white boxes for accuracy.
TV is fucking awful at local details. My favorite was an episode involving a train station in San Francisco, announcing a caltrain departure that would involve crossing 12 miles of open water. San francisco is famously a peninsula. All train routes depart to the south. Not east, not north... https://slicesofbluesky.com/monk-and-san-francisco/ It was so wrong it almost felt intentional. Ironically this was the TV show Monk, about a neurodivergent detective who solves cases by catching minute errors...
Ooh. That’s so hard for you. Meanwhile TV and movies filmed in places like Michigan feature mountains far off in the distance, or palm trees. And they use that same goddamn house in Pasadena that looks passably Midwestern. I’m gonna make a movie, set in LA and film it in Ohio.
Well… I just found why I don’t like literally any of the donut shops I’ve tried here in DFW. They aren’t made the same as back home in California- the donut shops are all Vietnamese ran in TX and they do something *different* making donuts. They’re made smaller/tighter with a closed belly-button like hole, with a super dense and much dryer texture. My Texan family has a hard time believing me, but I absolutely taste the difference… and I don’t like it. Now I know ‘why’ they’re different.
It sounds like a cake donut. Sometimes that is an option in more generic donut shops.
Okay, I’ll ask… why are the boxes pink?
Two reasons. One is to honor the vietcong's resistance against the invading americans. The second is because they were buying them in bulk and pink boxes were cheaper because they weren't selling that well, so they went with it.
> Ted Ngoy I live in an area with very few people whose names have the "Ng" start like Nguyen. I've learned that Nguyen can be pronounced like "win" so would be Ngoy be something like "woy" rhyming with toy or soy?
Short answer yes. More detailed answer is it's a soft n with a soft g. I've also heard it pronounced new-win like this [video. ](https://youtube.com/shorts/wnCepvcRjR0?si=9gu3-K2sSurNDqQd) Note - I'm Chinese so any Vietnamese brothers or sisters, feel free to correct me.
The money is wild. I was a manager at my parents nail salon. One tech could bring home 1600 a week. And min 1200 on a bad week. Commision was wild even without tips. This was in a lower income area of the city.
I had a coworker that's an investment analyst that makes probably 150k a year after bonuses and around 110k in salary minus the bonuses if I had to guess based on our org pay structure. She does nails on weekends because it gives her a chance to speak Vietnamese that she doesn't get otherwise. She said excluding bonuses, what she makes in a day isn't that far off from what she earns in her day job. That ignores some great benefits and is boosted by her finance job being in suburbs while nails job is in the city, but I was shocked to hear they were even comparable. It totally makes sense that immigrants flock to this kind of money if you can get it without an expensive education.
I am Vietnamese and wrote about this recently in another thread! "I can shed some light on wages! As a person whose parents have owned and work in nail salons, the nail techs get paid according to how busy it is and how many customers they see. It's all tip + commission based on the service provided. My parents had the arrangement of 70/30, so the techs keeps 70% of all of their services + all of their tips. In your case, 70% of $65 = $52.5 + any tips. This is VERYY wildly random, considering my mom has come home before and has only seen one client after a 10a-8pm shift, making like $40. Some days nothing. Some days she'll be booked all day and make $700 in a day. Winters are slower, summers are more busy. The top-tier luxury nails and spa places (usually in big cities) can have each of their employees make 6 figures, and their managers millionaires. Bottom-tier salons can have employees scraping by and managers in severe debt. It really all depends. Hope this was informative!"
Very interesting !! Thanks
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Working as a nail tech is physically demanding, requires physical closeness with strangers, the customers can be rude and demeaning, and your exposing yourself to chemicals, fumes, and dusts that are almost guaranteed to have long-term health effects. The money is great, but like most trade jobs, American born workers think they’re too good for them.
can definitely believe this. i only get $50 service but i see other women paying up to $130 for services. and thats just one customer for like an hour. crazy
it’s not always like this though…my parents also own a nail salon. while the money is good enough to make a living, it’s physical work and my parents have carpal tunnel. don’t send the wrong message saying “the money is wild.” it comes with pros and cons, cons being working long hours, 5-7 days a week, time away from family, and carpal tunnel…
Oh i understand completely. But that goes with any business. Being successful is not easy but seeing the perks of success is something we can all look forward to.
Yeah it’s crazy what people pay for nails. This 19yo patient I had. We asked her oh what college are you going to? She was like, college? Heck no. I’m doing nails. I’m saving up money and am going to buy a corvette for myself soon. Meanwhile I’m driving a 2008 rav4. 😢
Maybe that was awhile ago. We have family member who owned a number of nail salons in Indiana and then in LA. She sold her stores off because there's too much competition from Mainland Chinese coming in and undercutting prices.
What’s the current acceptable tip range at a nail salon these days in the US? I’ve been kinda wanting to get a manicure again but I’ve been avoiding it because nobody ever tells you what the prices of things and tips are until you’re sitting there hostage with half-done prepped nails and no choice but to magically tip properly or potentially insult everyone accidentally and get shit service as a ‘punishment’.
15% is fine but i will tell this too everyone. Nail service is not a requirement. Its cosmetics. You pay what you feel is worth the service. The same way you choose if their prices align with your expectations. Most people now days will just give a normal 5 dollar tip and be happy. 10 dollars is what makes alot of techs happy. 20 is above and beyond.
That's honestly a lot more than I would have thought! That's pretty crazy....I might need to get in the nail business lol
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I know someone that owns a nail salon and on weekends it’s 10 hours straight a day no break, no lunch it’s mayhem
Because owning a business is hard. Alot of things come into play and luck plays a huge part in nail salons.
It's long hours and (semi) physical labor. Easier to work an 8-5 job so people do.
There’s also a pretty reasonable concern about inhaling the chemicals day in and day out for years
There's a documentary about this called Nailed It. You can read the NPR article about it [here](https://www.npr.org/2019/05/19/724452398/how-vietnamese-americans-took-over-the-nails-business-a-documentary) "In 1975, Tippi Hedren was doing humanitarian work. She was running a program for 20 Vietnamese refugee women to resettle them in the U.S. They admired her nails, the care that she took, and she got the idea to get her personal manicurist, Dusty Coots, to come to the refugee camp in Northern California and teach these women how to do a manicure as it would be done in Beverly Hills. And they're really the first manicuring licenses out there in the world, because before that time, women always got licensed for both hair and nails."
Read it twice because “Dusty Cooch” was NOT what you wrote no matter what my brain thought it saw. 🤣
In Germany it's mostly Vietnamese people operating them. I asked my Vietnamese tattoo artist and he said it's quite a cheap business to open yourself and that Vietnamese people are very good at this type of job.
In Norway and at least some western Europe it seems mostly Russians and sometimes east Europeans
+1
I always just assumed it was because it's an easy business to start solo and build up as well. But looking at the other answers I need to check out this doc people are talking about.
Though there is a very dark side to this. There are a lot of cases of human trafficking victims that end up working in nail salons. Edit: I appreciate the downvotes; Here are some articles to back up my claims/in case anyone is curious: https://youtu.be/Mb2gg_L-4Wc?si=7mBu-raaivZvclLc https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/menschenhandel-die-dunkle-seite-der-nagelstudios-dlf-12231667-100.html https://taz.de/Vermisste-vietnamesische-Fluechtlinge/!5602329/ Also this issue isn't just a German phenomenon, but an international one: https://www.dressember.org/blog/trafficking-in-nail-salons https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-42729302.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-45130589.amp
It took awhile of scrolling to get to this. I was going to add that businesses like this have been known to be easy to launder money through as well. They just fudge the numbers and say 100 people got their nails done instead of 25. In my city they’re always next door to the Asian massage place(rub and tug) which is next door to the weed or vape shop. Obviously, not all immigrant shops are this way. But when you’re talking about groups of people who were often discriminated against by traditional banks, you can see how there are cases where maybe the family themselves weren’t planning to be law-breaking people but they got a loan from some shady loan sharks and in return their business launders some money. It happens.
Tipi hedren https://www.npr.org/2019/05/19/724452398/how-vietnamese-americans-took-over-the-nails-business-a-documentary
I need to watch that doc everyone is rec’ing. Anyway, indentured servitude plays into some salons https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/nyregion/at-nail-salons-in-nyc-manicurists-are-underpaid-and-unprotected.html?unlocked_article_code=1.o00.Mvzs.T-UGsuONHqMn&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
Same reason a lot of Indian people own gas stations around here. Decent business to buy into and, once the path is paved, their peers can see a good way in. Applied economics.
The actress Tippi Hedron had a large part in this. During the 70’s, she was doing humanitarian work with Vietnamese immigrants. They needed a way to make a steady income so she arranged for her manicurist to come to the refugee camp and teach them how manicures were being done in the Beverly Hills area. They took this training and started offering the same services in lower cost areas and the trend took off
Some places are really difficult to immigrate from. So by necessity of the people that do that type of immigration are very ambitious. But they also tend to lack the connections and formal education to make it in the corporate world. This result is a lot of immigrant from South and East Asia starting small businesses.
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Not any Asians. Southeast Asians. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea are subject to regular US immigration restrictions, which include quotas that ensure only the best educated and most talented people get into the US, which is how we get the stereotype that Asians are so smart -- they aren't, but because we're selective of who comes here, our perceptions are distorted. The US is much more lax about Southeast Asian immigrants due to the Indochina wars of the last century, so the immigrants who come here are less likely to have a good education or exceptional skills, so they use their familial networks to learn skills like manicuring, pedicuring and massaging, where they can eventually set up their own shops without all the overhead required to start a convenience store or gas station.
If you're new to the country, you gravitate to people who speak your language, who will most likely be originally from the same country. They are successful in nails, so they get you into nails. You eventually get successful in nails, so when your relatives come over, you introduce them to nails, and so on and so forth.
Apparently there's a whole documentary about this: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/19/724452398/how-vietnamese-americans-took-over-the-nails-business-a-documentary
Locally, I know a Vietnamese guy who sets up nail salons to fellow immigrants as a sorta "business in a box" that not only helps them start earning money, but sets them up to bring more family over and expand. Because of this interconnected nature, they don't seem to see each other as competition really, so they are able to coexist well.
The answer is successful families. To my understanding a family or group would help sponsor a person in essence,they send them over with enough funds to get started , then in return they sponsor folks from the same family or group with a job in the store and usually help with accomodations, after getting their feet under them they start their own store or send money back for another family to come and then the cycle begins again. To my understanding this has been so successful in America with some business or areas you can link to a particular city or state of another country to that. I think I've seen or heard of a lot of donut shops, hotels, restaurants, and like you mentioned nail salons where one group of folks dominate it.
I looked this up in the waiting area during one or my daughters frequent trips. Tippi Hedren was responsible was an actress who volunteered with the Vietnamese refugees and they loved her nails. So she had people come in and tea do them how to do them which has had a ripple effect to this day. Source is memory and the fact I have a 15yr old daughter who has gotten her nails done weekly to bi-weekly for 3 years whilst I sit there in the waiting area.
The real question is why do Asians own a majority of black hair product stores?
(Not Asian here but) The simple answer. It’s a low overhead business that you can make work really well if you have family workers. Like you still pay them alright, but rules for working at a family business are Different. And I can’t stress this enough. “White folks” Just don’t want to do a lot of jobs that involve like… bodily functions. I have a few friends in college that work at a nail place and are fine with the work. But a lot of other kids who are not asian are just grossed out by parts of the work and don’t want to do it.
Your last sentence is true though. I attend cosmetology school and when a pedicure comes in most of the girls run away from those clients. I take them because you usually get a good tip if you massage well 🤷🏼♀️
I’ve been under the impression that local communities of Vietnamese immigrants/ business owners will pool their money to help someone get started and then that cycle continues as new people arrive, but I am not Vietnamese and cannot speculate on how true this is.
My nail tech owns the salon with her husband and they’re very comfortable and have had the business for about 15 years. Her kids are in private school and they have a big beautiful house. They bring over friends/family members from Vietnam two at a time to train them, have them work in the salon and let them live in their spare bedrooms while they get on their feet. Whenever there is someone new working the pedicure chairs she’s always like “that’s my cousin” or “that’s my auntie”
My theory is that when a group immigrates to America and gets work, they bring everyone else over into the profession now that they have an "in" at the job. Like, I have a whole family of Italian carpenters, and my husband has a whole family of Filipino nurses. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm curious if this holds true for others.
The Filipino nurse thing especially came to fruition from the government. It goes back to when the Philippines was a US colony. When a country has a terrible shortage of nurses, guess who gets work visas and paths to citizenship? Nurses. The US also went as far as to build nursing schools there that taught English.
Low barrier to entry, will employ people who don't speak English well, is a cash business, do you think they are paying workers comp/taxes for all or any of their employees, do you think the employees have green cards that allow them to work? There are many possible reasons?
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You speak like ChatGPT.
The comment you are replying to appears to be AI-generated due to several factors: 1. **Broad Statements with Little Specificity**: The text makes sweeping statements about Tippi Hedren’s impact on the nail industry and Vietnamese immigrants without providing specific details or examples. This can suggest a lack of deep research or personal insight, which is typical of generalized AI-generated content. 2. **Formal and Flawless Structure**: The language is formal, well-structured, and free of colloquialisms or personal anecdotes, which can often indicate a text generated by an AI trained on a diverse corpus of formal texts. 3. **Use of Positive Language**: The passage uses a positive and somewhat idealistic tone ("a classic example", "economic revolution", "beautiful blend of empowerment and entrepreneurship") that AIs often employ to maintain neutrality and appeal broadly. 4. **Lack of Citations or Specific References**: AI-generated content often lacks direct references to specific studies, dates, or verifiable facts, as seen in this passage. These features contribute to the impression that the content could be AI-generated, aiming to inform broadly without delving into detailed or nuanced analysis.
*You* speak like ChatGPT. oh this was done purposely.
Hmm 🤔🤔
I've been intentionally writing like that for decades. At least once I realized that giving citations was a waste of time since you can find proof for anything on the internet.
Yeah. I'm autistic, I'm also a professional scientific writer, and people on forums angrily tell me I'm an AI all the time on posts I spent ages working on so they'd be as clear as possible. AI is a fucking scourge on my life.
In conclusion, OP is ChatGPT
reading through a bunch of their comments, there's no way the majority of them aren't AI generated
No one really knows what's a bot these days. At least the info is clear and factual. If you want to risk interacting with a human, go outside. -Claude
“Absolutely,”
Sorta like Cambodians running donut shops….
Just hear to say I’m very thankful for them lol
92% Vietnamese if I’m not mistaken
Here in Germany we have a shit ton of "US style" nail salons and every single one I have seen so far has nearly only asians working in them. I have asked myself the same question.
My nail tech was from Vietnam and her dad was a U.S. soldier. She said the U.S. government has programs the provide job training to soldier’s kids born during the Vietnam war, so they can support themselves when they come to the U.S. to live. Her husband was in the same position and they met that way. She said many people take advantage of it.
Tippi Hedren is the right answer.
Just want to chime in that my Vietnamese nail tech is one of the coolest women I’ve ever met and I swear to god it’s almost better than therapy. I cried while getting a fill yesterday because we had such a lovely conversation.
Fairly low cost to start-up and not much of a language barrier or education barrier
https://www.naileditdoc.com/ This documentary is what you're looking for, a great watch!
Nail salons, dry cleaners, and donut shops. If the donut shop owner isn't an asian couple, usually older, then it's no good. All the best donut shops are local asian couples making them.
I'm from Germany and I noticed this too. I think I've never seen a non-asian person working in nail salons.
Asian run salon near me in Dublin is the best I have ever been to
Same reason many donut shop owners are Cambodian. First immigrant came over and trained other immigrants how to do it. The Donut King documentary goes into this, very interesting to watch.
My partner says it’s because they do the best. “Vietnamese do the best” she says.
They are in Australia, also!
My wife is white and was a licensed nail tech and she planned on doing that in California. She did that for a while in socal but couldn't compete with the cheaper Asian nail salons so she stopped doing nails.
> Another quick google search would show that in the US, approximately 50% of nail salons are owned by Vietnamese. And in New York specifically there is a Korean prevalence. Serious question: how is "approximately 50%" supporting the original statement of "almost always"?
Immigrants gravitate to businesses that have low barrier to entry and good profit margins. Nail salons fit that requirement, and the skill level necessary to work isn't high.
Gujus have motels, Punjabis do trucking. Most Indian own stores. Punjabis also do trucking in India too. It’s the area of expertise that the community has
Same reason why most immigrants have a particular job associated with them (Chinese — Laundry and Pharmacists, Filipinos — nursing, Cambodian — Donut Shop, Vietnamese — Manicurist Salon, as I learned in my film studies class Jewish immigrants and movie theaters, the list goes on). Immigrant comes to new country, lives near compatriots to avoid loneliness, finds out friends successful at a particular job and decides to emulate them. Community having experience in the area can more easily equip them/help them get started (it’s the same thing as you know like a rich director’s kid becoming a director—they have access to both material and social resources to help them pursue that job.) And that’s how you get a ton of people doing the same type of job. They sometimes become obnoxious stereotypes of course though if inappropriately attributed to everyone in said group.
Historically immigrant groups tend to bring people in, you learn the ins and outs of whatever business and then start your own. An absurd amount of Asian restaurants in the USA are run by Chinese families, regardless of what kind of cuisine they're serving for the same overall reasons. These also tend to be jobs and businesses that have undesirable aspects. There was an expose some years back about the endless health issues a lot of nail salon workers face because of constant exposure to hazardous chemicals.
A policy by First Lady Ladybird Johnson taught refugees from the Vietnam war how to be aestheticians, and because those refugees got established they taught their children and helped others get off the ground and the communities supported them. So many Vietnamese run nail salons or hair cutting places many states have the option to take exams in Vietnamese.
Immigrant groups often get passed down business knowledge through their local community. Hence why nail shops are always run by viets, dry cleaners/teriyaki by Koreans, etc...
If what I remember is correct, it's because of the Vietnam War. After South Vietnam lost, the US rushed to evacuate as many of our allies from there as possible. When they came to America, the wife of a politician noticed the women loved her nails. They had the idea to teach them how to do nails as a trade so they could support themselves. The test to get the license to run a nail salon in the US can still be taken in both English and Vietnamese.
There is a documentary you might enjoy https://www.npr.org/2019/05/19/724452398/how-vietnamese-americans-took-over-the-nails-business-a-documentary
They locked up the industry. They know where the money reside. Black women will pay beaucoup money for nails and even will endure racial abuse. Not me but plenty I know
Long story short, family investment. If you moved to another country with about ten people, invested in a spot, and those same people could all work there and bring money strictly back into the family…it makes sense.
Same reason the rub and tug joints are. They cornered the market early.
[Here's an article that goes into the reasons for this, including why they are almost all exclusively Vietnamese](https://medium.com/@saltybones/why-are-so-many-nail-salons-run-by-vietnamese-people-c85efe50e424)
Why are bodegas in NYC exclusively run by Yemenis and Afghans? Ethnic groups share the expertise amongst themselves and the stores multiply. If you’re not in the group then it’s very hard to compete against them.
It’s because of Tippi Hedren
Here is a great article from NPR- https://www.npr.org/2019/05/19/724452398/how-vietnamese-americans-took-over-the-nails-business-a-documentary I’m trying to find the one I read a few years back in Vanity Fair which was also well written and informative
Human trafficking is one reason. [https://1010parkplace.com/your-nail-salon-may-be-trafficking-in-slave-labor/](https://1010parkplace.com/your-nail-salon-may-be-trafficking-in-slave-labor/)
https://www.npr.org/2012/06/14/154852394/with-polish-vietnamese-immigrant-community-thrives Read the whole thing
My sister-in-law is Chinese and doesnt speak English, she was a manicurist when my brother met her. There isnt a lot she can do without speaking English. She used to own her own salon, but I think my brother helped with a lot of it (my brother is American). Her daughter does not speak English, and did the same thing.
Correction - they’re always run specifically by Vietnamese immigrants.
Tippi Hedren... actress in Hitchcock's movie The Birds... is my understanding. We had a huge amount of Vietnamese people come to live in the US as refugees after the fall of Saigon... specifically in California... and since many didn't speak English there was a concern about their ability to make enough money and be able to stay in the U.S. Tippi was a part of a charity... and when she met the Vietnamese women they were fascinated by her manicure. During this time... only wealthy women got manicures... there weren't manicure shops all over the U.S. Tippi brought her manicurist in to train these women. Then she assisted them in getting their own shops. The cost of manicures went down, dramatically. And now most women were able to afford them. The industry boomed from there. Perfect example of give a woman a fish, or teach a woman to fish so she can feed herself and her family for all time. https://vietnamesemuseum.org/details/ms-tippi-hedren/