By Michael Miller, Press of Atlantic City
NORTH WILDWOOD – Most of the summer, the customers who come into Kim’s Oriental Nails are vacationers or second-home owners.
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Steve Schwalenberg, of Middle Township, and his wife, Cindy, left, share a laugh with customer Michelle Pizza, of North Wildwood, at Kim’s Oriental Nails in North Wildwood. |
But owner Steve Schwalenberg, of Middle Township, said his policy is to treat everyone like a neighbor.
That business attitude has served his nail salon well for nearly seven years, he said.
“This is a vacation area, so we serve a lot of tourists. But we treat you like you’re a local customer,” he said. “You have to take your time and give customers the experience they expect.”
That means greeting customers when they come in the door, being friendly and offering them a chance to sit in a comfortable massage chair if they have to wait a few minutes for their appointment, he said.
“Show them that you’re happy to see them. It doesn’t take much to smile at your customers,” he said.
He and his wife, Cindy, formerly owned a nail salon in Lancaster, Pa., before moving to Cape May County in 2007 to work at Kim’s Oriental Nails in a North Wildwood strip mall under its former ownership. Schwalenberg bought the business from a friend five months later.
“People know it by Kim’s, so we kept the name,” he said.
Schwalenberg and his wife emigrated from Vietnam. He came to the United States as an orphaned child and became an American citizen in 1984. He is proud of his Vietnamese heritage, he said.
“It’s the old saying: You can take the farmer out of the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the farmer,” he said.
Schwalenberg said he always wanted to go into business for himself. The salon business is highly competitive and operates on thin profit margins.
Nail salons are almost entirely independently owned across the country, according to market analyst IbisWorld. The top four companies hold just 6 percent of the fragmented market. Barriers to entry are extremely low, with most employees working as independent contractors.
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full article by Michael Miller from Press of Atlantic City.