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

Alright, Cole thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I first had the idea of creating this brand after reading an article in a GQ magazine saying that nail polish was poised to become a men’s grooming trend. This was during peak pandemic so I quickly ordered some nail polish for myself to give it a try and honestly didn’t have the best experience finding a brand that I really identified with. A lot of the brands out there are very female focused, especially when it comes to the name of the colors which is one of the most fun parts of nail polish. But I did fall in love with the actual process of putting on polish and the confidence boost it gave me when wearing a color I loved. It quickly became my weekly self-care routine – on Sunday nights I would throw on a movie or tv show and paint my nails with a fun new design.

One week I just started thinking, what would it take if I wanted to create my own brand for other people like me who wanted to experience the confidence boost of wearing nail polish with a brand they could easily identify with? After hundreds of Google searches and numerous emails to different manufactures I finally found the perfect partnership with a manufacturer in New York that was also willing to help me get started because they also believed in the mission of my brand.

Finding the right manufacturer was really important because I didn’t know any of the technical information behind the nail polish formulas and they were able to help a ton on helping me understand what ingredients are important and what their purpose is in the formula. They also helped me understand a lot of the restrictions around selling nail polish that is unique to it because of the types of chemicals in the formula – one of the biggest being that the nail polish has to be shipped via ground because of the flammability of the chemicals which was important to know as I was about to start an e-commerce business and needing to ship all the orders out myself. We also talked a lot about the services they could provide, what minimum orders would look like, and what overall process would like if I chose to proceed.

Having all the details on how to get the product created then led to figuring out how much it was going to cost and if I was going to be able to finance this dream. There is a fairly high entry cost to getting into the nail polish industry based on the minimum order I was going to have to sign onto for bottles – it was 10,000 bottles with financing terms of half up front and the remaining upon filling. On top of the price of the product I was also going to have to buy additional packaging, shipping supplies, business insurance, a website, and payment processing software. I then needed to create an initial forecast of units at various price points to see what I thought was feasible from a sales perspective at the right retail to attempt to make it a profitable endeavor. Overall, I thought the opportunity of launching this brand would be worth the costs of getting it up and running and decided to proceed with the manufacturer.

Next came a lot of paperwork as I officially created the business through the state and city and authorized purchase orders for the product. I feel like this was one of the most challenging parts because it felt unnecessarily complicated on filing the paperwork with little guidance on how to effectively do it myself. When I first filled out all the paperwork I did it myself, but when I had to update my business when I moved from Columbus, OH to Seattle, WA I sought out a lawyer to assist in the process because I wanted to make sure it was done correctly. It’s valuable to have a lawyer you can trust who will help you do the legal work correctly upfront because it’s a lot less expensive to do it right the first time than trying to have them fix it once it’s become an issue.

Once the paperwork was all filed, I began building out my brand with packaging designs, website building, social media creation, and picking out polish colors. This was probably one of the more fun periods because it was so exciting seeing my brand come to life into a cohesive image. Once, I was almost done with the website, I started to plan my big launch event. It wasn’t anything too glamorous as we were still mainly sheltered in due to COVID, but it did involve a lot of website testing to make sure everything worked properly. When the day of the launch came, it was nice to have the support of all my friends and family watch as I started the next chapter of this dream.

Since launching almost two years ago, I’ve still been doing a lot of learning. There’s a lot of competition online so I’ve gotten more involved in local markets. I’ve also seen what colors my customers respond to more and have pivoted my color buying strategy to align with these trends. I’ve also learned the importance of good financial bookkeeping and how staying on top of it makes it much easier when it comes to filing taxes.

Cole, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I created NE1 as a response to a growing industry for gender neutral beauty. As someone who was looking for ways to show off my personality, I was totally lost. Our goal is to welcome everyone into the nail polish world because everyone should feel as fierce as I do when I’m rocking my favorite color.

What really makes NE1 a unique brand is our value for inclusion, community, and sustainability.

It was important to me to create a gender-neutral brand that is inclusive to any gender you identify with because everyone is just trying to find their group, community and family where they feel supported and comfortable. It’s been really interesting over the past decade as brands have started to explore this space more and being very deliberate in the community they foster for their customers and after personally feeling how some of my favorite brands make me feel, I wanted to make sure I could do the same for others. I want my customers to see NE1 and know that we are creating a safe space where customers can be themselves no matter how they identify even beyond gender through the self-expression of nail art. One of the ways we do this is by having all the color names be gender neutral and named by customers, which brings a new perspective for every color.

I wanted to inspire the next generation and support their dreams so I created the NE1, NE-Dream Scholarship Fund with $1 from every bottle going to this fund. I started the NE1, NE-Dream Scholarship Fund because I value continued education immensely. I believe there is always something new you can learn and wanted to be able to give that opportunity to the future generations, especially as schooling is becoming more and more expensive. The scholarship is available for high school seniors looking to pursue additional education in many different avenues including trade schools, technical colleges, 2 year programs, and 4 year programs. In our first year we were able to offer a $500 scholarship and will be announcing the winner later this June! A really unique part of this scholarship too is the winner will then pick a color of their choice and name it and it will become part of our Dreamer Collection, which I’m hoping will inspire customers to keep pursuing their dreams as they are wearing these colors. Additionally, $2 from each of those bottles will go back to fund the scholarship for the next year.

The main focus for our brand around sustainability comes through smaller packaging and education of recycling for consumers. When I was first researching into creating this brand, I often heard that so many people didn’t finish bottles and just kept them sitting in their homes. I figured if there was a way to help customers finish their bottles they would be more likely to recycle them, which is how I landed on smaller bottles. I also realized that the average customer didn’t know how to properly recycle their nail polish either which is why I lay out the simple steps right on our website. Being sustainable is important to me because I didn’t want to create a brand that was just taking up space and causing waste. There is enough trash in the world that is causing detrimental effects to our earth.

Beyond some of the unique social aspects of NE1, the polish is amazing because almost all of our colors have spectacular 1 coat coverage meaning you only need to put one coat of nail polish on to fully cover the nail. This is great for anyone in a rush looking to quick elevate a look as they are heading out the door or someone who likes to switch up the color/design of their nails often. Additionally, our formula is fairly quick drying, often it takes 5 mins or less for the polish to be dry enough to be able to use your hands again. I would also say it is fairly long lasting for a traditional lacquer nail polish. Our quick 1 coat will often last 2-4 days, but with 2 coats we usually see at least 1 week and up to 2 weeks with a top coat before chipping starts occurring.

Since starting NE1, one of my favorite things is selling at different markets because I do get to interact with so many different people all the time. My favorite interactions are definitely the ones of people who have never painted their nails before and were curious enough to stop at my booth and brave enough to let me paint one of their nails to give them a taste of what it’s like to have their nails painted. The pure excitement and enjoyment on their faces reminds me every time why I set out to create this brand! I also get a lot of young kids who stop and my booth and listening to them try and pick a color and often negotiating with their parents to try and get more than one color always makes me smile. Also, now that I’ve been in business a bit longer, I am getting quite a bit of repeat customers who are coming back for new colors and the validation of having repeat customers is really nice to solidify that other people love my polish as much as I do and want to continue to support our mission.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

A time I have had to pivot since starting NE1 was around my color inventory strategy. I had initially bought larger quantities in some of the more basic colors because I was planning on living them longer and had assumed these would be some of the safe colors that customers were likely to buy given they were proven good colors from other brands.

After selling for a few months, I quickly realized that my customers weren’t buying these basic colors and instead were gravitating more towards my fun, seasonal colors. I have since started to pivot my inventory strategy to more of a limited quantity model focusing more on smaller buys of more seasonal colors that aren’t available year round.

To get through some of this extra inventory in these basic colors I have been trying to complement my seasonal colors with these basic ones to push them as a bundle pack to sell together.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think the main thing that has helped start to build our reputation in our market is the authenticity behind the brand.

NE1 is a brand for everyone that cares about our consumers and we put a lot of deliberate effort to that. We use some of our profits to give back through our scholarship fund for the next generation to follow their dreams. We collaborate with customers to bring in all different perspectives on color names and share their stories of what inspired the name behind the color. We also make sure content we are sharing on social media is inclusive and sharing additional content to raise awareness of some of the major issues we support and need to bring attention to in our community.

I know we would not get the support we get from our customers if we weren’t putting in the commitment to being an inclusive brand as we are.

Contact Info:

• Website: forne1.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/for_ne1/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NE1llc
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@for_ne1

Image Credits
CATHERINE LAVY – Lavybug Photography