A rosy vision of manicure, pedicure business

 

By Derrick Silimina

The manicure business is booming in Zambia with more technicians spending long hours each day buffing, scraping, painting, and polishing their clients’ nails for a living.

According to latest statistics, global nail care products’ market size was valued at over $19 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.2 per cent from 2022 to 2030. 

For this reason Rosaria Chola, 30, from Solwezi’s Kyawama Market is earning money by offering nail beautification services for women including manicures, pedicures, nail polish application, nail repair, and hand and foot treatments. 

“I started the business at home in 2017 and later started operating in the market in 2022. Despite the high costs of artificial nails and glue, this service costs K100 to put nails on fingers and toes,” Chola explains. 

With a profit margin of about 50 per cent for her service, she describes the business as a good venture which is very profitable depending on the number of customers. 

Chola discloses that with an average number of customers of five per day, her total revenue per month is about K2,000. 

After realising how lucrative the nail beautifying business was, Chola took to business training in January 2020 to hone her skills and completed all the 24 topics on offer. “The training helped me with the ability to save money and to welcome customers. Identifying potential customers is another skill I acquired from the training.” 

To increase the number of customers, Chola has continued learning different nail styles and designs from colleagues and from the Internet to keep up with modern trends. 

Mentors from Fortune World Investment Limited who are the facilitators of the business training programme which is sponsored by Kansanshi Mining Plc advised her to buy a smartphone and open a Facebook page to further advertise her services. 

Since Chola intends to open a manicure and pedicure shop in town centre by the end of the year, FWL counselled her to maintain a case book to record all transactions. 

Chola said, “I thank KMP for the training which has helped me in business as without them, I would not know what to do. I urge them to continue helping others.”