Ezza Nails: Scaling the Nail Salon

Christopher Ryan, Kimberley Marsh, Lindsey Joseph

Product #:W44753

Supplier:Ivey

Discipline:Entrepreneurship, Operations Management

Setting:United States, 2018

Details:Case (PDF) • 9 pages • 2025-08-26

Subjects:

Geography:

North America United States

Your Price:

$9.71

Purchase this material with a free Educator Account and enjoy more benefits:

Free Educator Copy
Free Teaching Notes
Build your coursepack
Discounted academic price

In 2018, Alexandra Breuer and Kimberly Marsh, co-founders of Ezza Nails (Ezza), were preparing to scale their manicure-focused start-up. Operating in a highly fragmented $14 billion nail salon industry, Ezza differentiated itself through a focused service offering, a tech-enabled customer experience, and an employment model aimed at empowering technicians. As they considered raising $1.5 million in growth capital, Breuer and Marsh faced a critical decision: should they add pedicures to increase capacity and revenue, or should they stay true to their manicures-only brand?

Learning Objectives

This case is well-suited for use in MBA-level core operations courses and electives in service management and entrepreneurial strategy. In core operations, it can be used to study the concepts of focused production. In a service operations course, it provides a practical context to analyze service design, demand variability, and capacity management. In entrepreneurial strategy, it highlights the challenges of scaling a values-driven start-up in a fragmented industry. It also touches on human resource management themes, including the trade-offs between compensation models and their relationship with operations, empowerment, and culture. Students must use data from a pilot location, along with customer behaviour insights, to evaluate whether pedicures are a viable operational and strategic addition. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:

Describe the trade-offs involved in a focus strategy.
Calculate capacity and revenue under different service configurations, using operational data.
Evaluate the operational and cultural consequences of different compensation models.
Explore approaches to matching supply and demand in services under uncertainty.
Evaluate strategic trade-offs between brand mission and revenue growth.