Fine Polish Nail Care — SME Case Study (UAE)

Fine Polish Nail Care in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, is a one-year-old business that delivers nail care products and services to women. Fine Polish was founded by Hala Alawi in 2020 with hopes to become a place of nail care for women to feel relaxed, respected and rewarded. Fine Polish offers all kinds of nail care such as manicures, pedicures and nail enhancement. The founder focused on creating a calm zone for women, serving only core nail care services to feel relaxed while also rewarding customers with professional and high quality services that meet their expectations.

The beauty industry, especially nail care, is gaining a lot of market popularity in the United Arab Emirates and is considered a female need. As an entrepreneur, Alawi took the chance to invest in the market by creating a business and marketing strategy to help achieve her goal.

Fine Polish Nail Care A business strategy explains the mission and vision, sets a budget, reviews challenges and draws a future roadmap. Building a new team is challenging, especially while serving in the personal care service. The industry itself is challenging since it’s full of competitors and creativity.

The founder accepted the competition by entering the market with a new strategy of only selling nail care services. Nails give the first impression to people, especially for ladies, who should always take care of their nails. Giving full effort and attention to nail care is new to the market in our country, which makes Fine Polish unique from others. Accepting this challenge added a lot of pressure to the team to succeed with service limitations. Women enjoy the attention of getting treated, and this is what Fine Polish makes sure to deliver to its customers.

Mission and Vision Fine Polish created its own atmosphere in the beauty industry by specializing in nail care to satisfy ladies needs, and is run by a strong management team. The management team stated the main goal with its mission and vision to be a guide to employees, resulting in a successful and profitable business.

Mission ¡ To deliver quality service by continuously training nail technicians ¡ To provide a great customer experience ¡ To ensure cleanliness by sanitizing the nail tools and chair after each customer

Vision

¡ To create a spot for ladies to feel special and refreshed

Organizational Structure

Founder Hala Alawi Taleen Al Rasheed May Sarah Amina Business Development Manager Nail Technician Nail Technician Nail Technician Figure 54: Organizational Structure of Fine Polish Nail An organizational structure defines the management structure of a business and helps to plan the future, and helps the employees understand their role and structure.

Fine Polish is a small business with four employees beside the founder, Hala Alawi. This ensures the roadmap is matching the mission and vision of the business and finances are managed. The business development manager has a big role in this business by managing the marketing strategy, maintaining relationships with clients and communicating with suppliers. Lastly come the nail technicians who reflect the business by their attitude, behavior and work.

Founder and Restructure Alawi worked hard to create Fine Polish to provide ladies with a place where they’ll feel special and refreshed.

Creating this spot took a lot of time to study the industry while also being different and innovative. As discussed above, one of her missions is to ensure a clean place to avoid any transmission of germs between clients since their experience matters to the business. Unfortunately, the opening of Fine Polish was postponed after clashing with the COVID-19 pandemic. After opening, Fine Polish focused on the importance of hygiene through sanitization to ensure client safety. Fine Polish only accepts customers with appointments to highlight social distancing and that the center is sanitized after every customer. Last but not least, customer feedback ensures the hard work of management.

Service and Product Description Fine Polish serves core nail care services by using high quality brands and tools from different trusted suppliers in the market.

clean, shape & file nails with treatment and massage Manicure & Pedicure nail layer with powder and water to strengthen the nail Gel Powder nail layer with acrylic to strengthen the nail Acrylic plastic layer to lengthen the nail Extension normal nail coloring Polish lengthening the nail by using gel formula under LED light Gel Tips lengthening the nail by using acrylic powder Acrylic Extension Figure 55: Services offered by Fine Polish

Applying new business strategies to Fine Polish was the founder’s goal to result in a profitable and successful business. Focusing on customer satisfaction will lead to customer loyalty and positive feedback. As a result, Fine

Polish’s strategies are

¡ Availability on social media, which is a must since customers spend most of their time exploring services and products to try. Fine Polish uploads professional pictures that grab customer’s attention with hashtags that explain the center, locations and services.

¡ Charging reasonable prices to satisfy customers and gain their loyalty and repeatable visits.

Customers are attached to paying less than usual prices in the market, which gives them a push to try a new place.

¡ Hire professional and creative nail technicians who will understand customer needs and give good treatment to customers for a good reputation. Nail technicians are the reflection of the business and leaves an impression.

¡ Host special offers and events for occasions such as birthdays, bachelorette parties, farewell parties and graduations. Customers enjoy feeling special and treated especially for these occasions.

An operational strategy is monitoring the business and team to ensure they’re using the correct roadmap that will lead to reaching the mission, vision and objectives.

Fine Polish monitors the present and future to achieve what it’s adding to the market.

Customer satisfaction Good reputation Center cleanliness Loyal customers Familiar in the market Profits Short Term Process Long Term Goals Figure 56: Long-term and short-term strategies of Fine Polish

The power of marketing is the key to successful small businesses. A well-studied strategy could help a small business grow viral and be known. Marketing reflects the management point of view by analyzing the five P’s of

the business

¡ Product

Core nail care services including manicures, pedicures, gel, acrylic and extensions.

Fine Polish sells just nail care services to give full treatment and attention to the customer without any other disturbance. In addition, customers can reserve the center for special occasions to host an event or party.

¡ Price: Charging reasonable prices to be able to compete in the market and grab customers attention to gain their repeat visits and loyalty. Fine Polish also applies special discounts for university students, referrals and sharing a post on social media.

¡ Promotion: Promote services on different social media platforms such as Instagram, Tiktok and Facebook. Fine Polish also uses Google reviews that give honest promotions to customers.

¡ Place: An easy-to-access location in Sharjah that is the new crowd spot for university students and entertainment. Moreover, Fine Polishes uses placement beside competitors to be more noticed in the beauty market.

¡ People: Kind and understandable employees who work with passion and creativity so that customers can enjoy their treatment. Furthermore, Fine Polish serves a professional and high quality service to customers.

Business and

Fine Polish challenged themselves by only selling nail care services, which is unique to the United Arab Emirates. Usually a beauty center is full of services. It was inspired by Europe, the USA and other countries, since they have separate centers.

¡ It was a big risk to take in this country since clients are not used to getting their needs in different beauty centers.

¡ Legal challenge: The Sharjah Municipality provides special rules and regulations for beauty services to ensure business strategies. It added limitations to Fine Polish since it is small and new. Fine Polish faced high legal costs with the branding that challenged its budget.

¡ Location challenge: Choosing a place full of competitors is a risk, but gives an advantage and chance to be known in the market.

¡ Other challenges: Choosing the right employees to be professional and kind to customers, and also to present the business in a good image for customer satisfaction and experience.

Successful/Failed Practices After being opened a year, Fine Polish has succeeded in customer satisfaction. The hard work of the management resulted in high Google reviews and suggestions, which they consider a good reputation. Additionally, the business got a high rating from the Sharjah Municipality for following COVID-19 safety regulations like social distancing and sanitizing. On the other hand, the business faced difficult times when starting out. In the beginning, the business faced a challenge to find and choose suitable and professional nail technicians who would serve high quality treatment to customers. Secondly, Fine Polish had a low profit until recently because of the pandemic, which affected it from gaining familiarity in the market since beauty events are not running.

Fine Polish completed one year in the market, all while facing the COVID-19 pandemic. Many challenges came across its roadmap since Day One of studying strategies and the market, including: legal challenges that altered its budget, building a team and communicating with trusted suppliers to deliver the best quality and service to customers. Today, the business has a good reputation in the market of serving the best nail care services.

Fine Polish also built a loyal and truthful team that ensures business sustainability. Finally, it counts on loyal customers who are satisfied with their treatment and service.

Analysis Fine Polish is a nail care center that was created by Hala Alawi. Besides her, there is a team consisting of a business development manager and three nail technicians. Nail technicians are the main characters in this business since they reflect the image and reputation of Fine Polish. The team works hard to achieve business goals and a vision by serving customers with professional and high quality treats. In an analysis, a start-up business should take its time to experience the market and its ups and downs with different challenges. In addition, creating a business strategy helps to make decisions and can be used as a roadmap. Fine Polish takes the advantage of social media platforms to promote business products and services as free marketing. Moreover, starting slow step- by-step is organic to any business for avoiding further pressure or loss.

A business journey is long and full of challenges and actions that teach owners and entrepreneurs. At Fine Polish, many points were taken in as knowledge and experience for the running business and its future.

Lessons learned from this journey are

Studying the market Finding the suitable employees Branding budget Getting familiar brands Figure 57: Lesson Chart of Fine Polish

Mission & Vision Business Strategy Challenges Today Lesson Learned Figure 58: Conclusion of the small business Fine Polish Nail Care Fine Polish Nail Care was founded a year ago and opened during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was its biggest challenge. Due to that, the management team worked hard to grow the business. They focused on the goal, mission and vision, which is a roadmap to success. The mission was to provide a clean center, great customer experience and professional, high quality service.

Furthermore, the founder always ensures ladies feel at home and are refreshed. Making them happy is her aim and goal.

To create a business and marketing strategy, many studies were done, especially with entering a new market. As discussed with the founder, ladies enjoy the quiet place by reading a book, cup of coffee, or even by relaxing. As a result, achieving a good reputation after one year of hard work is a good sign for a small business to grow and enjoy upcoming profits.

Online reviews, customer satisfaction and loyalty are powerful after a year. Although many failures came across its map, they only added experience and value to the market knowledge and will be avoided in the future.

Giving attention to always be on point and perfect is not the key to success, learning from mistakes is considered the right experience.