How Vietnamese-Americans Took Over The Nails Business: A Documentary
If you got a manicure lately, chances are your nail salon was run by Vietnamese entrepreneurs. In Nailed It, director Adele Free Pham investigates how refugees built a multi-billion dollar industry.
If you've had a manicure lately, chances are you probably had it done at a nail salon run by people of Vietnamese heritage.
The salons are everywhere — in nearly every city, state and strip mall across the United States. So how did Vietnamese entrepreneurs come to dominate the multi-billion dollar nail economy?
Filmmaker Adele Free Pham set out to answer that question in a documentary called Nailed It. Growing up in Portland, Ore., she says that she observed that all the nail salons around her were Vietnamese-run.
"So I knew that something was missing in mass media about this thing, this nail thing," Pham says in
