Opening a school and salon in Kiev, Ukraine

As well as being at the Estet show the last three days, our evenings have been spent viewing different premises in Kiev as we need a headquarters for the distribution business in Ukraine and a location for a new school and salon. Lena, our new Sales Manager in Ukraine contacted the real-estate agents and did an initial search so that Iryna and I had a short-list of properties to view. Lena did a great job!

Yesterday evening we signed a contract to rent a wonderful office in Kiev. It's located right in the center on one of the two streets where all the upmarket fashion shops are. It has two large rooms, a waiting area, kitchen and bathroom with shower. High ceilings and modern suspended lights with white walls give a first impression of elegance and style. We fell in love with it immediately and the owners are absolutely lovely people who we will meet for a meal next time we are in Kiev.

In addition to Lena, we expect to start with an instructor (we meet tonight to make a formal offer), two nail techs for the salon and a old friend who will be our accountant. We plan to open for business on the 1st December and will announce a series of Master Classes that will be held from January.

The school will also be available to our other school partners in different regions or countries so that they can make their own Master Classes in Kiev. It's all very exciting!!

Bob

Shows in Russia, England and Ukraine

It's Sunday morning here in Kiev, Ukraine. Bright blue sky outside and a hint of winter in the air. As I write this the bells from the 1000 year old Orthodox church of St. Sofia are ringing out across the city.

Yesterday the ESTET beauty show ended after three days. For us this was the best show to date - in September we had a booth at a show in St. Petersburg, Russia (that's a beautiful city) and also the Olympia Beauty show in London. Six weeks and three shows - that's one crazy schedule and in all honesty too much - Iryna is pretty exhausted. Now we have 10 days to recoup before we do shows in Riga, Latvia and Helsinki, Finland and Iryna goes to Sofia in Bulgaria to help judge their national competitions.

All three shows were successful for us. We're a new company and don't have high expectations - but we gave out thousands of catalogs and business cards, Iryna's nail art demo's were a hit everywhere, we had interest from schools that want to partner with us and most importantly all the people we spoke to about our new concept really embraced our ideas and were totally enthusiastic about these. You can really more about the concept here:
http://irynagiblett.com/en/our-offer

The ESTET show was always going to be special. Kiev is Iryna's home town and before she moved to Sweden to live with me she had her own salon and school here and for five years was a judge at the national competition. So during the three days many of her old business friends and contacts came by to say hello!

The show was very busy even though Ukraine is suffering badly because of the economy. By early afternoon of the second day we had run out of catalogs and business cards. So I ran out and quickly bought a low cost colour printer, designed a one-page flyer and started to print these on our booth! Such was the interest that on the first day we had to call Iryna's Mum to come and help us on the booth - she's also a nail technician. On the second day we called a friend to help. So we started with three people and ended up with five!

Iryna and Irina Zamostinchuk continuously made nail art presentations. Irina is a very talented nail artist and competition winner - everyone who saw the nails she made on the show were totally impressed with her work. Another friend from Moldova, also an expert nail artist also popped by and started making nails ;-) The photo below shows from left to right: Dojana Chilochi, Irina Zamostinchuk and Iryna Giblett:


Here's a photo of the wonderful nails that Dojana made for Iryna:


Here's some photo's of our booth that I took early yesterday before the show became full of people:









Bob

New website released

Our new website at www.irynagiblett.com was launched yesterday evening. There is still some information and a partner log-in area to add but we had pressure to release the website before the Olympia Beauty show this weekend.

Our first product catalog!

English version, and............................................Russian ;-)

Two crazy weeks!

Both Bob and I suffered from jet lag after getting back from the US. But with just over three weeks to our next show in Russia, we just had to work through the tiredness.

We managed to do a lot! Bob designed labels for our new product jars and ordered these to be manufactured. Then we created a 16 page catalog, started work on a new website, designed 4 adverts for two magazines and two show catalogs, designed graphics for the shows and ordered all the furniture and other items. Phew! Who needs sleep anyway ;-)

As I haven't had much time to make nail art, I felt began to get a craving to do something. So I've spent a couple of evening practising hand painting and the results can be seen below.













Hand painting is something that I really want to continue to work on. I didn't study art formally, so I have pretty much learned by trying and practising. I have spent a lot more time to develop my acrylic skils, so painting will be my main focus for the next months.

A busy time in the USA

We flew to Las Vegas on the 20th July and that was the start of our four city tour that lasted nearly 4 weeks. After a week in Vegas with Vicki where I made a workshop and we planned our activities for the coming months, we flew to San Diego for a weeks vacation. We just love San Diego!

Next up was Portland in Oregon were I was one of the educators at the NW Networking Event. It wasn't well attended, but it was nice to see those who came and the other educators. I made another two-day workshop there and then we headed to Long Island.

We had a few hotel problems on arrival as the room we ordered didn't actually sleep 5 people as advertised and we had our three children with us. Our youngest was given an air bed and spent the entire night rolling around - byt 5.30 in the morning we were all so exhausted we finally managed to sleep - by which time Bob had gone online and booked another hotel.

The Long Island Networking Event was very well attended and had a great atmosphere. Met more friends and BeautyTech forum contacts which was great. I made another two-day nail art workshop and then we became tourists for two days in New York before heading home. It was heaven to sleep in our own bed!

Special thanks to everyone who came to my workshops and for making these such fun and a success. I'll be back!! ;-)

Photo: Attending a lecture in Portland.

International Nail Competitions

We've been asked several times if we know of other nail shows of competitions outside of the US and UK, so Bob has done a bit of research and entered all he found in the Google calendar below. If you know of a show or competition that is not in the list, please add a comment so that we can add this.

Exhibition and Competition Dates