This Q&A is part of Observer’s Expert Insights series, where industry leaders, innovators and strategists distill years of experience into direct, practical takeaways and deliver clarity on the issues shaping their industries. In an industry long associated with toxic fumes, exploitative labor and narrow definitions of beauty, MiniLuxe is reimagining what luxury means: clean, ethical and empowering from the inside out. Founded more than 15 years ago with the goal of professionalizing nail care, MiniLuxe has become a case study in how design, technology and purpose can elevate even the most everyday rituals into meaningful acts of self-care.

As CEO Tony Tjan explains, MiniLuxe was built on the belief that true luxury isn’t about exclusivity but intentionality, an accessible “everyday luxury” that celebrates both client well-being and employee dignity. By investing deeply in its workforce through training, equity participation and career mobility, the company has achieved over 85 percent annual retention among hourly workers—an anomaly in beauty and personal care. MiniLuxe’s model has proven that ethics and economics can reinforce one another. From its proprietary clean lab and non-toxic product line to its use of A.I.-enabled pricing and predictive scheduling, the company’s innovations extend beyond aesthetics. Tjan sees the future of self-care as a balance between technology and humanity—where personalization, community and creative expression remain core.

At a time when conscious consumers are reshaping the definition of luxury, MiniLuxe offers a blueprint for how modern brands can scale integrity as effectively as growth. The company’s success suggests that the next generation of prestige is defined by purpose, transparency and the people behind the polish.

The nail care industry has long been fragmented and informal. What business strategies allowed MiniLuxe to professionalize the space while still remaining accessible to clients?

We founded MiniLuxe to radically transform the nail care industry, beginning with clean and ethical work practices and the empowerment of our team members— through a better and healthier work environment, practical training, economic mobility and creative self-expression. We have been able to do this with the belief that clients want a brand that stands for quality and consistency, and are willing to pay a slight premium for cleaner and better-for-you services and the ethical and empowering treatment we provide to our workers. By investing in our team members, we get long-term loyalty with over 50 percent of our hourly team members having five years or more of service (and with that are granted equity options) and an annual hourly worker retention of over 85 percent.

Luxury is often defined by exclusivity. How do you reconcile that with MiniLuxe’s positioning as an “affordable luxury”?

When we started this business 15+ years ago, my co-founders and I wanted to find something that was “Starbuck-able”—a small ritualistic personal luxury that made people feel good but was accessible to a broad base.

The price point of a coffee, lipstick or manicure makes these goods and services more recession-proof and “everyday” luxuries. Luxury is a term that goes well beyond “exclusivity,” which is a somewhat dated and narrow notion of what luxury truly means. Modern luxury is more intentional and increasingly about experiences, self-care and emotional well-being.

We were also, I believe, the first to recognize that the nail care industry was bifurcated between a very large number of mass, lower cost, traditional “corner nail salons” (think the nail salon equivalent of independently-owned quick service restaurants) and very high end and expensive day spas where you might have to spend hours wearing a robe to get your nails done (think fine dining for nails). Our belief was that there was latent consumer demand for an affordable prestige experience in the form of a new “fast casual” experience that we ended up calling MiniLuxe.

Employee retention in the beauty industry is notoriously difficult. What lessons can other service-based industries learn from MiniLuxe’s approach to talent development and equity participation?

Purpose and people are everything. You need to have clarity of your purpose or “why,” and you need to inspire your people with a job and a north star that gives intrinsic meaning. It’s key for your team members to be maniacally aligned around that north star. The lesson that I have learned over the years is that people ultimately stay or leave a company more because of the intrinsic meaning that they feel for their job. That said, we complement our efforts to deliver on our purpose with a belief that our economic success—our extrinsic rewards—needs to be shared throughout all levels of our team. When you combine a strong purpose with a commitment to share these rewards, there is strong alignment. There’s nothing magic about it, but not enough businesses do it: marrying significance with success.

One of the most fun ways that we get to celebrate our employees is when they hit certain milestones in their careers. We are proud to acknowledge our team members with equity rewards at each five-year anniversary and complement those equity option grants with other recognitions, such as having a custom nail polish color named after team members who have been with us 10 years or more. It’s great learning about the stories of why 10-year anniversary members pick the color they pick and the name for that color. One designer named a color Yun Tree, and another one Ruth. They were named after a tree in the person’s home country, and in the other case, Ruth was a lifelong client who had passed away, and the color was her favorite.

The number of hourly-working nail designers who have been with us for 10+ years is around 10 percent of our team and those who have been with us for five-years plus represents about 50 percent of our team.

As consumers become more conscious of the ethical footprint of the products and services they use, how does MiniLuxe turn “ethical and clean” into a business advantage rather than just a marketing claim?

Clean and ethical nail care was the founding principle and strategy of differentiation for MiniLuxe. When we started the business, we pioneered elements like a proprietary Clean Lab with surgical grade sterilization, we utilized our founders’ backgrounds in science from Harvard to help develop better-for-you products; built the pedi stations with no whirlpools (to avoid bacteria risk), created immaculate waxing rooms with strict clean protocols, and we committed to the ethical and fair treatment of our workers. Since founding MiniLuxe, we have paid out nearly $150 million in fair and ethical wages to our nail designers, and we also decided from the outset not to offer acrylic nail services (which were and are a popular segment of nail services, but are simply not good for you and our workers’ health). Other large company investments included when we decided to pull all OPI and Essie and develop our own line of MiniLuxe 8-free polishes and nail treatments, including our Environmental Working Group (EWG)-certified and best-selling cuticle oil, all made in the USA to ensure full oversight and transparency at every step.

What is most rewarding are the memories and stories that we have heard from our clients and team members about what our clean and ethical standards have meant for them. One of the most common comments from first-time clients is, “Oh my God, there is no smell!”

One memory that still moves me was the first time a client told us confidentially that she was going through cancer treatment and that this was the only place that she and her doctor felt safe for her to go for a mani-pedi, which meant that much more to her during a challenging period. We have since heard similar testimonies from various at-risk patients. The disclaimer here is, of course, that patients should check with their doctors what is safe or not safe for them to do while undergoing treatments, but to be seen as the better-for-you and safer choice for many is meaningful.

Another surprise call once came from the head of one of the most prestigious hospitals in the Boston area. One of our nail designers had recently joined their team as a newly minted phlebotomist. The director wanted to personally call me to share how amazed she was that we had nail designers with such depth of knowledge of key hygiene protocols and how personable this particular worker was with her infectious hospitality. We’ve also had our designers tell us that they feel very safe while pregnant, versus how miscarriages are a common risk in several salons that don’t follow hygiene protocols.

Technology is at the core of your model, from A.I.-enabled pricing to digital-first booking. How do you see technology shaping the future of luxury personal care services?

A.I. has many applications in personal care and candidly will likely have its largest impact in more staid and archaic industries. Within the world of personal care, we see A.I. having a role in predictive yield management, dynamic pricing, training and the overall client experience, especially in the area of personalized recommendations.

At MiniLuxe, we are big believers in using technology to give our nail designers greater autonomy and more time to focus on what they do best, honing their craft. Technology also eases the stress of scheduling and coordination, allowing our designers to work more efficiently.

MiniLuxe operates at the intersection of wellness, beauty and luxury. How do you differentiate in a crowded beauty market that increasingly blurs these categories?

Our biggest differentiator is the clarity of our purpose—to empower our communities through self-care and self-expression, with an anchored purpose that allows us to create differentiation across our brand, culture, technology and overall platform systems.

Overall, the types of businesses and business transformations that have intrigued me are where capital and entrepreneurship can be used as a force for good and where you can apply design and technology to archaic industries. The nail industry is only beginning the birth of its innovative phase. 

On a personal level, I have a deep appreciation for Japanese- and Scandinavian-inspired design with pops of whimsy. We have tried to have the MiniLuxe brand echo some of that aesthetic, and it has been equally important to have a view of simplicity for the technology that we are bringing into the business, from our app, to our booking systems, to digital payment and inspiration mood boards for nail designs.  

In a time when some consumers are cutting back on salon visits, what makes the nail care category resilient, and what does that say about the evolving definition of discretionary spending in the luxury market?

As long as modern nail care has been part of the American landscape (since the early to mid-1970s), nails have shown incredibly resilient and steady growth outside of “black swan” events like Covid-19, which temporarily shut down the industry. Nail care is the most democratized entry point of beauty and self-care services, making it an affordable luxury like a movie ticket or lipstick (e.g., the lipstick index) in good times and bad. And in some cases, it can even have the contrarian impact of increasing sales during a recession as consumers shift spending from more expensive self-care and beauty services to more affordable experiences such as nail care.

MiniLuxe has developed proprietary clean products alongside its salon business. What role does vertical integration play in building a defensible and scalable brand?

Vertical integration is an important part of any defensible and scalable brand, but it usually comes at a later stage of development for companies. We are being selective where we vertically integrate and are most focused at this time on delivering 10x betterment of our client experience.

Today, we integrate proprietary MiniLuxe products seamlessly into the overall brand experience, prioritizing better-for-you, clean formulations in-house. We maintain control over quality, innovation and consistency. For example, we have been early in the identification of ingredients that we don’t believe should be in nail care products. None of MiniLuxe’s branded products has, for example, TPO, which has been a hot topic in the news. Any time we evaluate a third-party product, we make sure that it meets our internal standards of safety by being toxic-free or only trace (i.e., non-harmful levels) of anything we have on our ingredient watch list.

The clean beauty market can be murky, with many products claiming to be “clean.” By pursuing EWG certification, one of the most rigorous standards, we ensure that our clean beauty claims are backed by real, verifiable standards in products such as our Cuticle Oil. We scale thoughtfully, ensuring new products, like our recently launched hand cream, are naturally incorporated into our nail care rituals, enhancing the client experience at every touchpoint.

How has digital and social media marketing changed how luxury beauty brands like MiniLuxe connect with customers compared to a decade ago?

No different than any other brands. End-users have shifted to their phones and other screens for the “social proofing” of their choices. With that said, nail care is a fairly intimate experience where the provider is touching and holding your hands (and waxing even that much more) so there is as much influence in the moment with what a trusted provider might recommend for healthier nails, color selection, nail art design or post-waxing care.

At MiniLuxe, we embrace digital shifts by using social media and online video to highlight our artistry and tell stories that are authentic and in a personal voice. From showcasing our designers across different markets to sharing nail art and wellness routines, we create content that both inspires and educates, while reflecting the trust clients experience in the salon. We focus on original ideas, not just pushing products, making the social media experience feel more personal. This approach brings the intimate, in-person experience online, letting us connect with audiences in real time and show visually what we do best. 

Scaling ethical values—whether wages, benefits or hygiene standards—can be difficult when expanding. How do you ensure consistency across regions as MiniLuxe grows?

One of our board members once said, “Show me a good studio/store and I’ll show you a good studio/store leader.” It again comes down first and foremost to having as many A-leaders in our studios. We don’t always get it right but we are intentional, patient and very greedy about who we hire, promote and develop as our studio leader, operating or franchise partners.

In addition to getting great people who can lead in the studio, we do everything possible to build a strong culture and systems. Our systems span the range from how to properly shape and color a nail to monitoring key performance indicators of the business to how best to position and execute on a new product or service for launch. When you pair a strong leader with strong systems, you don’t guarantee success, but you sure increase the probability of it. Furthermore, none of these systems is static, and there is an interdependency between developing great systems and great people. What do I mean by that? Our team of operating partners, studio leaders and nail designers acts as a neural learning network to improve our systems. It’s like a living and breathing Slack learning channel that shares ideas, provides feedback, hacks and ways to improve on any system or aspect of our business.

Do you see your employee equity and ownership model as a template that could transform other low-wage, high-turnover industries?

I see broad employee ownership as an economic tool that goes well beyond retention and the potential, if used more broadly, to narrow the income inequality gap that we have in this country. There are two great financial innovation tools for the broader base of Americans to generate wealth. 

One, the home mortgage, which allows one to have a leveraged way to build long-term equity value that outstrips the cost of the borrowed capital. And two, equity ownership that complements a W2 check. The latter has long been used as a tool for executives and higher-ranking employees, but in my vie,w should be used more broadly across businesses that have liquid stock appreciation potential. 

Imagine if just a fraction of the successful big-box retailers and large retail chains that employ hundreds of thousands of hourly workers shared just a little of their equity gains with those floor workers. Even if a very small portion of that equity pool was reserved for special or emergency needs of the core base of hourly workers (at MiniLuxe, we have a small but important emergency resiliency fund), that would be a positive advancement of overall workforce engagement and security.

What consumer trends—whether in wellness, sustainability or design—are most likely to reshape the beauty and nail care industry over the next five years?

Increasing integration of A.I., technology and design into more human-centric elements of wellness that cannot be digitized will shape the future experiences of self-care. While there are exciting developments in robotics and other technology, which will take some share from the marketplace (no difference from home-based massage chairs), there will, for the foreseeable future, be a market for human-to-human connectivity and real-world experiences. In fact, as technology and A.I. become more pervasive, the luxury of self-care may be that which is done IRL by real humans in an intentionally well-designed space.

Many luxury sectors are exploring personalization powered by A.I. and data. Do you see a role for hyper-personalization in nail care, or is consistency and standardization more valuable?

The two are not mutually exclusive. There is no one use case for getting your nails done. For example, if there is a special event, one might want to have highly customized nail art or an expression of nail design that reflects their fandomship for a team, character or other affiliation, but day-to-day, that same person might value super consistent standardization of their go-to simple classic nude or neutral nail look.

Again, as stated above, hyper-personalization is reshaping luxury beauty, and Paintbox’s custom press-ons are a direct response to the growing demand for bespoke experiences. Each set is handcrafted by a designer, using techniques like freehand drawing, 3D elements, gradients, intricate patterns and gem work, turning nails into wearable, reusable works of art. As elaborate press-on nail looks make waves on red carpets, Paintbox brings that same level of luxury and personalized creativity to everyday clients.

Looking ahead, what does the “future luxury salon” look like, and how might MiniLuxe be shaping that vision?

The future luxury salon will consider nail care across its multiple dimensions of consumer value: self-care, self-expression and community connection. I see nails as the “new face” with endless possibilities and spaces that elevate nails from what may be viewed by some as trivial beauty to a new category of accessory, identity and expression—a safe space (that 1×1 cm canvas of a nail plate) to make a statement about your individuality.

In addition to individual expression, the future nail studio will equally embrace the role that nail care has played over the decades as a mini-moment of joy and self-care. What will change is the form factor in which we deliver both expression and care, whether that be reimagined chairs, cocooned nooks or areas that use A.I. to digitally inspire one’s creativity. We will also be more expansive in our view of nail trends, bringing more east-to-west trends and catering to a modern global citizen and more conscious and intentional consumer. Exciting times ahead!