We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jessica Yum. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jessica below.

Jessica, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

The idea of Nova Nails came to me at a transitional time when I wasn’t thinking of starting an e-commerce beauty brand. From 2018 to 2020, I was building an elderly care business inspired by my family’s longstanding service to senior care. My caregiving business evolved into a senior home-share program, aiming to address the challenges of aging and senior isolation through communal living. It was a far cry from a venture in beauty and nail enhancements.

That business was my first attempt at being a solo-preneur. I aspired to disrupt senior care, to contribute to my community, and to meaningfully affect peoples’ lives. I was humbled by how challenging it was to be innovative in the regulated space of elder care.

In 2020, when the pandemic hit and everything came to a sudden halt, I was forced to face the demons of my business–one of the many being whether or not I could responsibly scale. I couldn’t see that happening, and so I spent some time consciously not working. For the first time in 2 years, I was re-acquainting myself with aspects of my life that didn’t involve hustling or girl-bossing 24/7.

I did one of the few things we could do outside given the social distancing mandates. I took my surfboard and paddled out for a few hours each day. The time I spent surfing was so joyful and restorative, it became a part of my self-care ritual that I stacked with other self-care rituals: cooking meals at home, sleeping 8 hours a night, doing my 9-step skincare routine, and… of course, painting my nails!

I’d do my nails the night before, surf the next day, and come out of the water with a mangled manicure. I didn’t want to accept that this was the price I had to pay for chasing my next best wave. So, in my search for a beauty ritual that could keep up with me in and out of the water, I discovered semi-cured gel nail stickers.

Having worked for me, I was so energized by the idea of building Nova Nails and so ready to share something that changed the way I cared for my hands. While I appreciate beauty and glam as a form of self-care, I knew I wasn’t one to regularly spend hours at the nail salon, dole out hundreds of dollars, and anxiously look over my nail tech’s work. Yeah, no. As an end user of Nova Nails, I had already bought into the manicure system and I knew others would love doing their nails this way. I saw this product as something life-changing, transformative, and so incredibly empowering for its users. I wanted to redefine what it meant to do your nails.

Nova is the innovative DIY manicure solution I want to bring to the world. And I’m so happy I’m here to share my collection with you.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m the founder and CEO of Nova Nails, an e-commerce gel nail sticker company based in Orange County, California. Nova Nails offers an innovative, DIY gel manicure system that can be done at home or on the go in 10 minutes or less! Our multi-sized gel strips are partially cured 60%-70% of the way and become fully cured once applied to the natural nail and placed under a UV/LED nail lamp for 1-2 minutes.

This process of applying semi-cured gel strips makes for a more comfortable and customizable nail enhancement experience! Not only can you mold and stretch the sticker to the natural curve of your nails, but the stickers can also be trimmed to your desired length. Once the stickers cure under a nail lamp, the gel completely hardens for a durable, long-lasting manicure!
My goal in launching Nova Nails is to re-define what it means to be a person who does their nails. Based on personal experience, I knew how intimidating, inconvenient and expensive a trip to the nail salon could be. The upkeep of nice salon manicures meant hours in a chair, brittle drilled-down natural nails, and the stress of prioritizing nails over other expenses. Like so many other busy people, I want a streamlined beauty routine that fits my low maintenance, budget-friendly, active lifestyle. That’s why I launched Nova Nails—to make both beauty and self-care accessible to everyone.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I announced the launch of Nova Nails in the summer of 2022 on my Instagram @novanails.xo to proverbial crickets! I had wrongly assumed that everyone would be as excited about my first collection of stickers as I was, that the product itself would go viral on its own. Sitting on tens of thousands of units of inventory, I panicked. No one really knew me, or my brand, and I felt this incredible pressure to go viral on social media. How do indie brands rise above all the noise in the beauty space? How was I to breakthrough as a solo-founded, self-funded startup against the corporate titans dominating the nail industry?

I decided to start small by selling Nova Nails at local pop-up markets, wanting to find and connect with my consumers directly, sell in-person, and get their honest feedback. It was an excellent way to see peoples’ real-time candid reactions to my designs. A few months in however, I felt my business plateau. My sales had become dependent on my participation at markets, and I was veering away from my original goal of building a business that could scale.

At the six month mark, I had chased down an established female founder in the baby care industry for a phone call. While her business was unrelated to nails and beauty, I couldn’t deny the validity of her criticism of Nova Nails and my sales strategy to date. Sometimes it takes an unapologetic critic who’s walked the path before you to realize that some things just aren’t working, and if my goal was to build an e-commerce business, I would need to fight for, and cater to, every customer online, not just the customers I could see in front of me.

I doubled down on optimizing my brand’s online presence, focusing on building a broader virtual community and driving sales from social media platforms to my website at www.nova-nails.co. It is an ongoing process to grow Nova Nails into a premier gel sticker brand, and knowing when to set ego aside and pivot quickly is such a valuable skill as a small business founder. For me, adopting new strategies conducive to making online sales drastically improved the company’s revenue performance and outlook for the future!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

To be perfectly honest, I was somewhat naive to the multitude of ways I would be challenged in creating products and building an online beauty brand. Consumers are so smart and selective now, with endless options at their finger tips. The beauty space being so competitive, sometimes you only get one shot at impressing people.

At times it seemed everything I wanted to do took more time and so much more money to execute. In these private moments of struggle and doubt, I learned to lean on my friends, my advocates and my evangelists for help and support. That even when my resilience is tested by a new challenge or unexpected mishap, I had a support system. I had purpose and community. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to help you if you only ask for it. And I’m very thankful to share this journey with people who inspire and empower me to continue onward and upward, to be resilient.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nova-nails.co
• Instagram: @novanails.xo