Today we’d like to introduce you to Jooyeon Song and David Miro Llopis.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Jooyeon and David. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
We created ManiMe to make on-the-go, healthy and easy-to-change manicures possible — all words that rarely describe traditional manicures.
[Jooyeon]: I’m originally from Korea, where we have a deep appreciation for beauty services and treatments. However, I was tired of immobilizing my hands for two hours in a salon. I had so many other things in my life I would rather spend my time on. I dreamed that changing my nail style could be as simple as changing my shoes. And while I explored the limited selection of “stick-on” nails, they weren’t a seamless fit for my nail size and I didn’t want to sacrifice quality.
I mentioned this challenge to my classmate David and he embraced the opportunity to find a solution. David is passionate about marketplaces and art. He was particularly excited about building a community around nail artists and promoting this form of self-expression.
At Stanford, we became “Manicure Girl” and “Manicure Boy”, always wearing our ManiMe prototypes and hosting manicure parties.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
A smooth road – No such thing for an entrepreneur, right? We’ve had a lot of ups and downs and challenges on our journey from manual rendering input to photogrammetric software development and beyond.
Nobody could ever give us the guarantee that the idea would work or that we would find the necessary resources, but we always believed in the idea, our mission and worked hard to make it happen.
After two years of developing the tech and testing product-market fit, followed by three months of beta service, we officially launched the ManiMe website in the U.S.. We know we will continue facing different challenges down the road, but that is what makes this journey exciting, unique and meaningful.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the ManiMe story. Tell us more about the business.
Our solution is the first-ever custom-fit stick on gels developed with proprietary 3D modeling technology.
You simply scan your hands by taking five pictures with your phone and select your design on our website. Our proprietary software leverage image processing and Machine Learning technologies to detect the exact size and curvature of each nail, generating a unique 3d model for each customer. Using the 3d model, we laser cut the sick-on, semi-cured gels to the customer’s unique shape. The ManiMe #hightechmani will arrive anywhere in the US within 4 business days. Our toxin and cruelty-free stick-on gels can be applied in a few minutes.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
We find ourselves lucky to have met each other at Stanford GSB and study there. We’ve met wonderful mentors, including a professor that later became our angel investor and advisor, and a very supportive community. Our first hire was a brilliant engineer we worked with while taking an entrepreneurship class at Stanford.. We often ask ourselves what would have happened had we not not taken that class. It was luck that connected us with valuable people, but it’s the hard work that David, myself, and everyone at ManiMe has put into that has made the company what it is today.
Pricing:
- One set of manis starts from $15
Contact Info:
- Website: manime.co
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: manime.co
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