May 16, 2017

Meet Ale Breuer and Kim Marsh of Ezza in River North

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ale Breuer and Kim Marsh.

Ale and Kim, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
We are the co-founders of ezza. As first-year students at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, our sporadic nail care quickly morphed into a frequent grooming necessity. With multiple nail salons located within steps of our apartments, we were confident that we would find an affordable place that provided reliable, high-quality services.

We couldn’t have been more wrong. We jumped from one salon to the next, facing recurring issues: Why couldn’t we pay online? Why could we only tip in cash (and who carries cash these days)? Why couldn’t we book appointments online? The whole experience was inconvenient, inefficient, and outdated.

We soon realized that this wasn’t just our experience. In fact, the nail industry has remained stagnant for nearly 40 years, despite dramatic changes in women’s lives.

While nails have become a grooming necessity for professional women like ourselves, we seem to have only two options: luxury salons offering expensive and time-consuming services, or cheap neighborhood salons that are inconsistent or mediocre in quality and cleanliness. Our wallet wouldn’t allow us to visit the former, and – once we became aware of the harsh realities of the nail industry – our conscience wouldn’t allow us to patronize the latter. This void was the genesis of ezza: a national, branded space where professional women could get reliable, clean, and quality manicures without breaking the bank or squandering an entire afternoon. But we didn’t want to stop there. With 99% of the nail industry comprised of women, we felt compelled to create a nail salon that redefines the standards of excellence for women on both sides of the manicure table.

From the customer’s perspective, we know that women feel more confident after getting a manicure. However, women face many unnecessary obstacles that make it difficult to invest in routine nail care. Some of these pain points include: having to have cash for tip, unreliable appointment reservations, inability to book appointments online, and having to sacrifice weekend time because of limited salon operating hours.

At ezza, we want to make the process of getting a manicure fit seamlessly into the modern woman’s busy routine so that she can reinvest her energy into getting important things done. We will do this by offering online booking and tip-included (cashless) payment, early morning appointments starting at 7 AM, and a membership option that allows customers to book recurring appointments. We want our customers to come to ezza because they trust that they will consistently get a high quality manicure without the fuss and know they will walk away feeling confident and empowered.

From the technician’s perspective, we want to raise the standards of working conditions for the nail industry. This article, The Price of Nice Nails, was incredibly eye-opening and a call to action for us. The nail industry is 99% comprised of women, and as it stands today does not set technicians up for success. Because a lot of nail salons are poorly managed, technicians face major issues like unfair wages, tips and commissions not being paid out, unsafe working conditions like long hours with no break and toxic fumes with no proper ventilation systems.

At ezza, we plan to disrupt this negative culture by offering a better compensation structure, career advancement opportunities through clear paths to promotion, formal mentoring and coaching to improve both technical and professional development skill, and ergonomic stations that promote the health and safety of our technicians.

All in all, ezza stands for a culture of empowerment. We aim to evoke this through our décor and business operations so that women on both sides of the manicure table leave feeling empowered at the end of every business day.

Please tell us about ezza.
We are a nail boutique for the modern woman. Ezza revolutionizes the nail industry by delivering consistent quality in an elevated customer experience. In fact, ezza comes from the Italian word “esatto” meaning “exactly”. Our customers get the exact same experience and know exactly what to expect no matter what technician they get. We specialize in manicures and we even have an online booking system that allows you to indicate your nail care preferences so that you can ensure that your manicure will be perfectly suited to your tastes, every time.

Our vision is to build a company that elevates the nail industry and empowers women on both sides of the manicure table. We look for nail technicians that share our passion for community and create an experience for our customers that leaves them feeling polished, confident, and ready to conquer the day. From the content of our newsletter to the decor inside our future salon, the ezza brand is intended to inspire strength and evoke confidence in women. Our signature color empower-MINT green stands as the symbol of these values and our commitment to this cause.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It is really important to us that we have a deep understanding of the nail industry. One of our early obstacles was finding industry experts that could help us better understand the challenges of the industry. We just didn’t know many people in the nail industry! That’s one of the reasons why I (Ale) decided to go to nail school in Chicago.

We’ve also learned a lot from our pop-up salon. We have our work cut out for us in changing manicures from a primarily walk-in service to one that’s appointment driven. Currently when women call ahead to make an appointment, they can’t count on the salon actually honoring that appointment and endure frustrating wait times. We need to show our customers that at ezza, we operate completely different. They can book an appointment online and know we’ll be ready for them when they arrive so that they can enjoy their service and then get back to their busy schedules!

Ale, do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I remember being so inspired by Lucille Ball. I used to watch the TV show “I Love Lucy” almost every night on Nick at Nite as a young girl. For my birthday one year, I was gifted a book on Lucy that told her story and described her road to stardom. I remember reading that her high school acting teacher told her that she would never make it in Hollywood and recommended that Lucy quit acting. As we all know, Lucy did not take her advice and made her dreams come true. Lucy defied all norms in the 1950s, never took no for an answer and was an unapologetic risk-taker.

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