Manicure price rise: Are you happy to pay more for your nails?

If you are partial to a manicure, it could be about to cost you more.

Why? More than 5,000 nail technicians across the UK are coming together to collectively raise their prices from Monday in what is being labelled “National Nail Price Increase Day”.

The Nail Tech Org, the company behind the movement, said it decided to make the change after calculating its members were making about £7 per hour, which is below the minimum wage.

Rising costs of utilities and products means nail techs say they are selling themselves short by charging less than their outgoings.

Ellie Jenkins, 27, has been doing nails for four years and is one of many nail technicians taking part.

“It will vary between £5 and £10 per service,” she said. “I’ve tried to keep it as low as I can because of the cost of living crisis.”

Many would say having your nails done definitely falls under the “luxury service” category, which she said she is aware of.

“We don’t want to put our prices up but we want to live again”.

Cost of overheads is one of the main reasons why Ms Jenkins, from Aberdare, Rhondda Cynon Taf, has decided to up her prices.

“No-one really understands the overhead part of a business. I’ve got three to four lights on constantly so my electricity bill is always higher. I pay extra council tax and I don’t pay [into] a pension because I can’t afford to.

“I’m looking at myself now thinking I need the money now, my children need the money now, I’m not thinking in however many years down the line.”

Ms Jenkins did not realise she was making less than the minimum wage with her current prices.

“I was earning under £8 per hour, which was shocking to think that.

“The fact you’re earning under minimum wage makes you quite upset.”

She said she was “nervous but very excited” to be upping her prices.

“It’s really beneficial that we are all raising our prices the same day and you know no-one is going to undercut each other.”

Amy Guy, who founded the Nail Tech Org in 2020 after a decade working as a nail artist and educator, said the biggest problem in the industry for a long time was “unfair pricing”.

“How do I make that change without feeling like it’s me against the world and that my clients are going to go elsewhere,” she said.

Ms Guy, from Liverpool, had the idea of the price increase day to give nail techs the confidence to correctly calculate their prices based on the cost of running their business.

She said she wanted the nail techs “to understand exactly what it needs to be for them to make a profit and run a sustainable business, and if they do need to make changes”.

She hoped they would “feel that support around them when doing that and hopefully we will see the change in the industry that I think we really need to see”.

Ms Guy described having nails done as like a “therapy session”.

“That’s the magic behind it… You’ve got that therapy session for two hours and you know you could have that little bit of ‘me time’, that self-care.”

She did a study through her business and said it showed that on average its members were being paid £7 per hour.

“We know that the alternative is that we’re not really making a profit and the fact that if we want to continue doing our clients’ nails for years to come, it’s a change that has to happen.”