Good Morning nail professionals! Welcome back to another fantastic article of Nail Tech Spotlight! This week we get the honor of having someone amazingly special in the nail industry today! I give you the wonderful Linda Nordstrom!
Good morning how are you today?
Fabulous and happy to be here with one of my favorite people!
Oh stop, you charmer you! I must say I am very excited to have you here, you are an amazing kind person, and I love the energy you radiate. Shall I begin and ask what got you started in the nail industry?
From the time I was a little girl, I wanted to do hair-when I graduated from high school I had to go to work, my mom could not afford to send me to hairdressing school, so I worked and saved the money to go to school in my early 20’s. When I got out of school I got a job immediately in a hair salon, while trying to build my hair clientele, there was a nail table and some smelly acrylic products that I started playing with when not busy, I fell in love with nails!!! After 1 year of doing hair, I switched totally to nails! I was then hired by a Nexxus distributor to sell hair and nail products in Rhode Island, this distributor also sold Creative Nail Design. This is when I met Jan Arnold, in a sales meeting she was doing for R.G. Shakor-the rest was history, 2 weeks later I was in Chicago for a Creative Nail Design Boot Camp, and this was the beginning of my professional nail career.
Wow, so you tried hair, I would have never guessed, that so cool though, you found your passion by just trying something new. How did you get into educating?
After I finished my boot camp with Creative, I became an educator AND I opened my first salon in Coventry, Rhode Island, I always loved teaching, especially back then it was either acrylic or natural nails. About 1 year into the first salon, I then bought a building and moved the salon into there-it was called The Nail Loft. Within the first year I had 8 nail techs, 1 hairdresser and 1 esthetician. My career with Creative ended up being a long one, I won many awards, Educator of the Year twice, I just loved it! In 1991 I moved to California to work full-time for Creative Nail and in 1992 Jim & I got married! I retired from Creative in 1995 to have our first daughter Niki!
Oh hunny you move quickly! And swiftly, you achieved so much just within a year of every step! Famous Names is very famous for their IBX Nail System, it has helped many nails techs with their clients, how did IBX come to be?
I had been retired for about 15 years, staying home, being mom and enjoying every minute of it – then the day came when I went to drop Niki off at Junior High-when she looked at me and said “”Mom-can I ask you a big favor”? Yes, honey, what is it- “if my new school asks you to volunteer for anything-can you please say no”! I was very active in our girl’s elementary school, I headed up The Junior Achievement program for many years and was lucky enough to teach this program in all grade levels. That is when Jim & I decided it was time for me to go back to work. At this time gel polish was just starting and we were invited to the launch of Shellac and walked out saying “Wow” this gel polish is going to be amazing – then after thinking about it – we said but what is going to happen when we are continually putting on the gel polish and taking it off, especially knowing our clients sometimes come into us with already compromised nails. This is where we got the idea of an internal strengthener that worked on the inside of the nail-so we could put whatever we wanted over top and help the nail place by Strengthening, Repairing and Protecting the nail plate-hence came IBX!
First when I see Niki again I’m gonna tell her she is hilarious, and then two, that is so amazing that you thought about the client first. So many times do we apply products and get paid forgetting that the canvas we work on must be healthy. So thank you for IBX! Where did the Dadi name come from?
Knowing Jim is the original formulator of Solaroil, which he did in 1980, it was the first project for Creative his dad gave him coming out of college. We always had Solaroil all over our house. When Niki was about 5, she found out her Dad made Solaroil so from that day on, she called Solaroil Daddy’’s oil. When Jim has a project, he is working on he always has a code name, so when Jim was formulating Dadi’ Oil, his code name was Project Daddy! After 18 months (this is how long it took us to get to market) of calling it Daddy-we just changed the spelling!
Oh my goodness, my heart is so happy and I have ALWAYS wanted to know why it was called Dadi Oil, thats so precious, Niki wins again! Being apart of a brand who offers products that heal people is something I’ve always loved about Famous Names, I actually think it’s quite rare. Nail techs, especially ones right out of school are so ready to do nail art and just make tons of money, but you all are here to say, your career is nothing without healthy nails, and I love that. Why do you believe we should always focus on having healthy nails first?
We don’t heal anything, we promote healthy nail growth-a healthy nail plate makes our lives so much easier as anything we put over it, lasts way better. And think of it, we are nail professionals-sure, our job is to make our clients nails look good – but why not have them look good from the inside out????
I agree, and thanks for correcting me, you are 100% right, we should make our clients look good inside out. When they look good, they feel good. I see your company started in 2010, how has the industry changed since then?
This is such an amazing industry- we just keep growing and finding ingredients that can really make a difference in what we do to help our clients. I feel on a whole, this industry promotes our small community to work and learn together. I have nail tech friends from when I first started in this amazing career, I still have friend that were clients of mine at The Nail Loft, we are family! The biggest change are the natural ingredients that have come about, and this is what helps our industry grown even more so.
When it comes to healthy nail care, do you have one suggestion we can follow or should live by in our salon?
I have 2 – IBX & Dadi’ Oil
Those are absolutely perfect, I need to go find my bottle and put it on now! I see you have a new pedicure line as well, what made you inspired to move into a pedicure line and what do you believe is the importance of maintaining healthy feet?
RELEAF was truly a labor of love. We had our Dadi line established, so we believed a pedicure line using the Dadi line would be super easy and effective! But, like everything that Jim does, he strives to make our products better, innovative and a little different than what is already on the market. We were also blessed to have Doug Schoon as part of our team, he and Jim have formulated some great products over the years. Our feet carry us everywhere, they are so important to our everyday movement, they need to be taken care of and that is what RELEAF does as it is based on our AU Complex and our Pure Hemp-Based CBD! I feel our customers need to understand just how important it is to take care of our feet. This is another reason why Aceso was a 3-year project, to produce products that can be a solution for some of the things our toes and feet go thru with natural ingredients!
Yes! I can’t wait to try Aceso, I know just the person as well. Congrats on your pedicure line, I always hear good things about it. Where do you see the industry headed in your opinion?
We are so blessed to be in such a wonderful caring profession, I see our industry progressing beyond our belief, there is so much science, ingredients, and techniques for us all to discover, learn and share! One of the keys is to keep an open mind and work together. This is something I have learnt from Jim, and I thank God for that as that is how IBX came about, Jim had an idea which seemed outrageous, But look at what has happened with IBX. It did take us 3 years to perfect, but well worth the wait! I hope to see the continuance of our working together to make this industry even more successful together.
I love that, and I completely agree, the more we get together, the better we will be. Thank you for taking the time to chat with me, where can we reach you or Famous Names on social media?
Facebook – FamousNamesProducts and Instagram-@Famous_Names
Thank you so much Linda for joining me, you truly are an exceptional professional, I hope you all enjoyed this lovely article as well. Be sure to stay up to date on nail news coming out, and until then, I will see you later sweets!
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