OUR DECADE LONG HISTORY

(from the point of view of our founder)

2011

I’ve always seen myself as just an accidental entrepreneur. I did not start Nail Deck to try to make the world a better place. Nor did I spot a big gap in the market that no one else noticed but me. On hindsight I probably did fulfil an unmet need; but that wasn’t why I started this business.

To be honest I was just trying to make some extra pocket money hahaha

That, plus I wanted to help my then-girlfriend, now-wife, purchase a bottle of nail polish from the US.

You see, 10 years ago, it was (and still is) logistically challenging to ship a flammable liquid product (aka nail polish) from the US to Singapore.

There were fixed fees and taxes that only made sense if you were doing a bulk shipment as opposed to shipping one bottle.

So taking pride in being a numbers kinda guy, I did the math and found that if I became the distributor for this brand of nail polish from the US and imported 800 bottles into the country, I’d just about clear out my life savings, but I’d only increase my per unit cost by 5%.

Being an ever-zealous, totally-naive and overly-optimistic 23 year old university student enrolled in the country’s top entrepreneurship program, I didn’t think too hard and jumped right into it.

But as I mentioned, I was really just trying to make some extra pocket money and didn’t think it would be my full time job/career now 10 years later! So typing all this now and reflecting on the origins of this business feels so surreal.

2012

If I had to find pivotal points in Nail Deck’s history, May 2012 would be one of them.

Not only because that was when I opened the first push-cart to sell nail polish and really learnt so much by interacting with everyone who visited me; but also because that was the month I decided to forgo my place as an Honours student in NUS School of Business and filed for graduation with a basic degree and no specialisation.

It all seems so reckless now but my rationale was that one year in the school of hard knocks would probably be more valuable than an additional year in university.

Of course the idea of being in complete control of my life was romantic and appealing too. Not to mention the sense of achievement gained from closing a sale. It was a high that I wanted to keep chasing.

So I worked hard. Really hard. Not necessarily smart; but hard.

On weekdays I’d run the push-cart at NUS and on the weekends I’d do pop-ups and bazaars. When I started hiring part-timers I’d run multiple pop-ups and bazaars while still keeping the push-cart running on a daily basis.

I was a man on a mission. A mission to prove that I made the right career choice. To prove it to everyone else. But more importantly to prove it to myself.

But as the wise people say - entrepreneurship is a marathon and not a sprint.

And while I managed to train for and complete my first ever Stan Chart 42km marathon race at the end of 2012, I was treating Nail Deck like a sprint and I was fast on track to burn out.

2013

I’m sure all of us have at many points in our life wondered what life today would be like if we had made a different decision in the past. I know I definitely have.

By the start of 2013, I had expanded Nail Deck from one push-cart in NUS to 3 push-carts by opening 1 more each in SMU and SIM. I was going to be the king of push-carts, I thought!

And with that added reached in the physical realm, my online store which I had launched in November the year before starting picking up some traction too.

I was on a roll! I had amassed a team of student part-timers across all 3 universities and I would use my bedroom in my parents’ house as my inventory warehouse.

Every night before sleep I would pack the online orders and consolidate the day’s sales and inventory requirements.

Every morning after waking I would travel across the island to all 3 push-carts just to restock the right amount of inventory for the day. All this before spending the day itself managing all my part-timers; and running either 1 of the push-carts myself or setting up a pop-up or bazaar.

Sleep was for the weak. Or so I thought.

And then one day I went to sleep and woke up the next morning with zero desire to start the day.

Oh no.

Perhaps it was the fact that it’d be more than a year since I’d graduated and I hadn’t met the goals I set for myself (which on hindsight today, I know was super unrealistic).

Or the fact that my friends from school had graduated too and were starting on their seemingly high paying cushy office jobs.

While I was hustling on the weekends, I couldn’t help watching social media updates of my friends living what seemed to be the good life.

As yet another wise man has said - comparison is the thief of joy. And I found myself starting to second guess myself.

Not too long after, I shut down all 3 push-carts.

And for the first time in my life, I started working on my resume.

2014

The year started with me thinking I’d never ever have anything to do with nails again.

I’d somehow managed to get myself into one of Singapore’s top venture capital firms and I was enjoying myself, truly! Not to mention it being one of the more ‘lucrative’ jobs in finance.

My plan was to learn all I could about building the next unicorn startup from the lens of an investor and then eventually venture off to do my own high-tech startup.

Interestingly around this time, 3D printers became a thing and the firm I worked for had invested in one of the fastest growing 3D printer startups in the world.

And it got me thinking - what if I did a 3D printer for nail polish? I already knew a bit about the nails industry and I knew that colour was an extremely important factor in the purchasing decision making process.

Once again, before I knew it, I had somehow managed to convince my beauty scientist friend from JC to join me in creating the world’s first ~ Nespresso for Nails ~.

It was exciting!!! We went around pitching the idea to individual investors, pitching to an MBS ballroom full of investors, attending tech startup events, and even joining a hackathon in Seoul!

And on the weekends we would spend hours at each other’s homes playing with chemical formulations, Arduino chips, Piezoelectric pumps and servo motors.

It had been just less than a year since I swore to never touch another bottle of nail polish again. But somehow at the back of my mind, I just felt like I had some unfinished business with the nails industry.

I had given up by closing my push-carts. And I didn’t like the sound of that.

But now, armed with a new vision and blazing enthusiasm, I was back in the game once again.

And this time I decided that there would be no turning back.

2015

Nail Deck 2.0 was born! The new Nail Deck was meant to be a smart Nespresso for Nails machine with its accompanying mobile app that allowed you to create any custom colour you wanted.

It was an idea rather ahead of its time and I’m not going to lie - we faced way more rejection from investors than I had initially expected.

Some even told me that I didn’t know what I was doing and that I should go and work for P&G or Unilever for a few years first to learn the ropes.

On hindsight they were probably right.

But I didn’t listen haha so on ahead we forged!

We decided to break down the idea to make it more easily digestible to the investors we were pitching to - a colour-first mobile shopping app that would allow you to browse through thousands of colours easily and then visualise said colours on your own hand before making a purchase (this was before Snapchat filters and AR/VR filters which are so common today).

And it worked!

We secured support from a local venture capital firm and then went on to secure a research grant from the government as well to build up the proprietary technology behind our colour matching algorithm.

By the end of the year we were a team of 5. I was pitching for funding left, right, centre while the rest of my team worked on the app and our marketing.

I even managed to get interest from investors in Japan! On 29 Dec 2015 I flew all the way to Tokyo to meet with them (it was also a great excuse to have a short holiday with my wife haha).

And as the sun set and the fireworks went off over the Meiji Shrine on NYE, I looked forward in anticipation for 2016 to arrive as the year everything would change.

2016

Honestly I had a lot of trouble drafting this post because if 2015 was about learning how to crawl as I slowly got myself back in the game; then 2016 was where I tried to run, jump and fly only to come crashing back down again.

I have very bittersweet memories of this year because it was probably the most exciting year in my startup life thus far; but yet it didn’t end quite as expected.

The year started off with a bang - our original team of 5 now had an army of interns as well!

Within the first 3 months of the year, we managed to launch our own iOS app that we designed and coded on our own. The media went crazy for it and we were getting tonnes of coverage!

But our sights were always set on the Nespresso for Nails idea and we knew the app was just the first step in many many steps that we had to take to make this a reality.

Next on our list was to firm up our own nail polish formulation because it was critical that we owned that intellectual property if we were to really launch this custom nail polish machine.

However cash was getting tight and the investors I was pitching to needed the idea to still be more easily digestible.

So we broke the idea down again to become the Lacquer Bar - a custom nail polish bar that you could come to and have us create custom colours for you!

Over the next few months we worked night and day to make this a reality and on 1 October 2016, we opened our little pop-up at VivoCity!

The media gave us so much love once again!

And I thought that with this much accomplished over a short period of 9 months, investors would be lining up to fund our startup.

But I thought wrong.

Desperate to keep the company afloat with only 3 months of runway left in the bank, I made a poor decision and decided to open a second Lacquer Bar in Capitol 2 days before Christmas.

Go big or go home, I thought!

And as the year came to an end and I looked at my bank account that only had 3 figures left, the answer was clear. I was going home.

2017

Nail Deck 2.0 was over as quickly as it had been formed. By the end of January, I had to make the painful decision of letting the whole team go. And till today, this still serves as the most painful memory of my entire startup life.

And honestly I was this close to calling it quits myself too. But fortunately my wife encouraged me to keep trying!

So I decided to take a step back and give myself the month of February to figure out what my next move would be.

I knew I had the ability to create high quality custom nail polish. And over the last few years I also found out from friends and customers that Singapore Airlines had a very specific requirement for their crew when it came to nail colours.

So I did what any desperate entrepreneur would do to save his company.

I emailed the SIA CEO directly to pitch my services!

Desperate times call for desperate measures right?

Did I think I would get a reply? No.

Did I, though? Yes!

In an amazing turn of events, I found myself inside the SIA Training Centre by the end of February 2017 creating custom colours for SIA crew!

It was mind boggling how just a month before I was going through the worst period of my entrepreneurial life but now here I was, working directly with our national carrier!

I was so grateful for the opportunity so I threw myself completely into the work. I was there week after week helping their crew with their colours. And before I knew it, an entire year had gone by.

Was this Nail Deck 3.0? I wasn’t sure. But one thing was certain. I had already failed twice and I was absolutely not going to let this by my third.

2018

For those of you who have been following us since the start, you’d have realised that Nail Deck was awfully quiet during the periods of 2017-2019.

Many of you assumed I had already stopped running the business but in actual fact I was just being kept so busy by SIA with the training of new crew that I just didn’t have the time to work on anything else.

(Bear in mind I was still holding down my full-time job at the venture capital firm.)

And to be very honest I was so traumatised by my double failures that I didn’t really dare to do anything different or groundbreaking anymore.

I honestly thought that working with SIA was just going to be it for me from now on!

But around the end of 2017 I started revisiting two ideas that had been brewing for years.

The first idea was for a peelable gel formula.

I had first seen it in Japan in 2012 and I honestly thought it was quite a silly idea at first.

But over the years I realised that it actually provided all the pros of traditional nail polish and soak-off gel without most of the cons!

The second idea was for a DIY Lacquer Kit inspired by Tamiya Cars that I first thought about in 2014.

And then in March 2018 I was invited to share a booth with a partner at Boutique Fairs. I had never heard of it before despite doing so many bazaars and pop-ups in the past.

But when I got there, man was my mind blown away!

I didn’t just know I had to get in after that. I wanted to get in. Badly. So I set my sights on getting in to the March 2019 edition.

And so after nearly 2 years of keeping things low-key, I was starting to feel the gears get back in motion again!

That all too familiar feeling of excitement was once again back in my bones.

2019

With my eyes set on getting accepted into the March 19 Boutique Fairs (BFS), I knew I had to pull out all the stops to impress the organisers.

My Lacquer Kit had, by now, gone through multiple iterations and I was ready for it to make a grand appearance.

And to market the Lacquer Kit, I thought about re-introducing the Lacquer Bar concept from 2016 but with a twist - instead of you standing behind a counter watching us create your custom colour, now you could actually enjoy the experience by customising your colour personally!

To top it off, I decided I would finally launch a collection that I’d be thinking about for years - the Hawker Culture collection!

And thankfully too because many of the colours have since become top favourites over the years - colours like Netflix & Chilli, Teh Tarik, and My Vice, Chicken Rice!

BFS was nothing short of amazing. It was my first ‘public’ appearance in so long and I was overwhelmingly grateful to meet so many of you who had been following me over the years in person!

And the minute the March BFS ended, I was already planning for the next BFS in November.

By June, after nearly 2 years, the work I had been putting into launching Light Lacquer and Aquajellie was starting to pay off too.

But by August, I realised I had bitten off a little bit more than I could chew.

While I would normally have taken much longer to launch Light Lacquer and Aquajellie, I knew that the November BFS would be a great platform to launch it.

So not wanting to burn out and make the same mistake for the 3rd time, I knew that something had to give.

On 1 October, I made the scary decision to take a leap of faith and leave my venture capital job of 6 years!

And as a ‘real’ entrepreneur once again, the gloves came off and I got into the full swing of things.

For the November BFS we had a bigger and better Lacquer Bar and we soft launched Light Lacquer (with only 3 colours).

And as 2019 came to an end, I regained most of the confidence I had lost from my last 2 failures.

But no amount of confidence and faith in myself could ever prepare me for what was to come as 2020 approached.

2020

While I was already full-time on Nail Deck since 1 Oct 19, it was really only on 1 Jan 20 that it felt real when I officially moved into my own office and made my first full-time hire.

We hit the road running with our plan to launch Aquajellie at the March 20 Boutique Fairs (BFS) and everything was looking promising for the future!

Light Lacquer had gotten off to a good start; and I was heading into my 4th year of providing Nail Deck nail polish to SIA crew!

And then Covid hit and I truly feared, for the third time, that this would finally be the end of Nail Deck.

2 weeks before Circuit Breaker, a hacker managed to break into our company’s Facebook ad account and wiped out all the money in the bank.

1 week before Circuit Breaker, I was asked to stop going over to SIA to provide my products and services (and understandably so); instantly wiping out the largest chunk of our revenue overnight.

As Circuit Breaker began and I packed everything to work from home, I looked at my new office of only 3 months and wondered if that would be the last time I saw it.

Fortunately, a couple of weeks into Circuit Breaker, we managed to recover all the money that was fraudulently taken from us.

But nothing can compared to the relief I felt when so many of you opened your hearts (and your wallets) to Nail Deck; supporting us with all your orders and sharing the love with all your friends!

I was (and still am) so so so grateful! I knew I couldn’t let all of you down by giving up.

So we kept our heads down and worked hard to bring some cheer and delight to all of you through this dark period.

By the end of the year, while things didn’t quite pan out the way we thought it would, a new normal had emerged and we knew we just had to roll with the punches, adapt, and survive; just like how we’ve always done it.