All it took for a small dental supply business to become the world's largest independent manufacturer of nail products was one man's realization that some of his biggest buyers of dental acrylics weren't dentists at all they were manicurists.
It was in the early 1980s that George Schaeffer, now president and CEO of Hollywood-based OPI Products Inc., first discovered that there was a huge and highly lucrative market for nail care. Today, the company's annual sales of over $70 million (in 2000) include some 20 million bottles of nail lacquer, gracing fingers in 56 countries including Japan.
"To wear a bright color is just absolutely wonderful. If you think of color as a flower, your nails are really like the petals. It's a very beautiful way of expressing yourself," says Schaeffer, who was in Tokyo to promote OPI's two latest collections one exclusive to Japan, the other already retailing in the United States.