Sharmadean Reid: The anthropologist mindset that built a business empire

Sharmadean Reid grew up on a council estate in Wolverhampton, raised by a single parent. Two decades later, she was walking into Buckingham Palace to collect an MBE for services to her industry, having built and scaled several businesses along the way.

In part one of her conversation with Sir Richard Harpin on the Business Leader podcast, Reid tells the story of how she got there.

In this interview, you will learn about:

• The waitressing job where Reid learnt her first business lessons
• Why a dream fashion degree left her with a dangerous gap in her business education
• The provocative email that won her a job
• How saying 'yes' to everything nearly cost Reid the magic of her first business

Sharmadean Reid grew up as part of a tightly knit British-Jamaican family in Wolverhampton, a place she still calls home. “The small-town mentality gave me a sense of ambition,” she recalls of her childhood. At 14, she took a £5-an-hour chambermaid job in a hotel, before working as a waitress at the hotel restaurant on Sundays. Here, her inner anthropologist revealed itself.

She would observe the men of the Rotary Club having their business lunches once a month. As she served them, she noted crucial information. “Anthropologists look at the codes,” Reid recalls.

As she watched, she asked herself, “What is the language of business? What is the way that you dress for business? What type of questions might you ask if you were meeting a business leader?” She learned the phrases used to make deals, but also how to behave among peers “to be invited back”.

Armed with this information, the world of business felt more accessible. At home she would devour the business pages of the Sunday papers on her bedroom floor. Realising that entrepreneurship could in fact be open to her, she set her heart on marrying it with her love of fashion.

Reid was accepted onto a long-coveted fashion, communication and promotion course at Central Saint Martins in London and excelled there. But her studies left her with a nagging doubt. “Not enough input at university is put into how you will make a living out of your art,” says Reid.

She developed far more business acumen from interning for stylists in east London. There, she observed first-hand “the language of negotiation”, such as how to get the best deal from a landlord, as well how to campaign for work with high-profile fashion clients. Once again, the anthropologist was in action.

How Sharmadean Reid nailed her business idea

Her anthropologist career continued when she joined Nike as a creative consultant. Her job was to spot fashion trends on the ground, long before they went mainstream. “I would go to see an all-girl punk band playing in Holloway to see what they were wearing and what the people in the crowd were wearing,” says Reid. “I still do it today.” In nearly a decade working for Nike, she travelled the globe from LA to Shanghai, future-gazing in the world of fashion.

One of the trends she spotted was the rise of nail art. Nail bars had started to pop up in London in the early 2000s, later becoming concessions within department stores. Reid could see a trend away from neat manicures to more artistic and eye-catching nail art, led by tastes in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.

She also picked up that it was “quite racialised” at the time, which might hold back mainstream adoption. Her mind was made up that there was a gap in the market after she requested a “double French – a French tip that’s white with a white half-moon” and her local salon couldn’t do it. “I’m just going to open my own nail salon,” she decided in the Christmas of 2008.

The email that won Sharmadean Reid a job

Before Reid launched her first business, she did something that has become a habit for the serial entrepreneur. She wrote a “rousing speech” to herself, which would become a kind of manifesto or founding text for the business.

“The speech needs to say, ‘The new world will be like this’,” according to Reid. “I think storytelling is one of the most important skills an entrepreneur can have, and this is your blueprint story.”

The blueprint distilled down to one key sentence: “Anything you want on your nails, we will do it.”

When she opened WAH Nails in Dalston in 2009, this is exactly what happened. Someone wanted dentist-themed nails, she recalls, and another client wanted a photo of their grandchild on their nails. The shop felt more like an artist’s studio, harking back to her days at Central Saint Martins.

“We looked more like a gallery, nightclub or tattoo parlour,” recalls Reid. Hiring quickly emerged as an early problem, though. People were either expert nail technicians or highly creative artistic types, whereas she needed someone who had a combination of these skills.

So she had to find talented people with potential, who were willing to learn. “I knew that the barrier to growth would be the training,” says Reid. She was in her mid-twenties at this point. Her hunch, based on her experience working as a brand consultant with Nike, was correct and the nail art created a buzz.

“Everyone wanted to partner with us,” recalls Reid, including brands like Ferrari. Selfridges offered her a pop-up concession on its famous Beauty Floor within a few months of opening the first store.

Reid's long-term goal had always been to secure a concession in Topshop. In 2010, with momentum on her side, she reached out to its concession buyer. After an initial rejection, she wrote to them: “Well, right now I’m wearing gold tips with Swarovski crystals. It’s called nail art and it’s the future, and your current nail bar wouldn’t have a clue where to start. Your customers are going to wonder why you don’t have it.”

This got her a trial that turned into a four-year residency. The lesson is that provocative statements can get the attention of buyers who are inundated with requests, says Reid. “I might send 100 emails, but I only need one ‘Yes.’ Remember that it’s a numbers game and the ‘No’s don’t become personal.”

What not to do

Looking back, Reid wishes she had been better at keeping a ‘not to do’ list. As well as running two successful salons, she was making additional revenue from work with brands at private events. She’d also just welcomed her first child into the world.

“I was like a floating dinghy in the sea saying ‘Yes’ to everything,” recalls Reid. She also found that while Topshop brought her prestige and footfall, she had lost some of the magic of her original, more chaotic and creative salon in east London.

Her second standalone WAH Nails salon in Soho, London, opened in 2016 as a “tech-enabled salon of the future” with a virtual reality booth where you could ‘try on’ nail designs and a chatbot to help with nail appointment bookings.

Reid used a tech-savvy friend she’d met in the early days of the business to create the chatbots. “I collect and save people,” says Reid, “because I know if I work with them, some magic will happen.”

All these conspicuous tech embellishments were designed to enchant investors, making the salons important showcase spaces to build brand equity. “Physical stores aren’t just places to do retail, they also showcase the aspirations of your brand and are a way to impress investors.”

The tactic worked, helping her secure funds from venture capitalist Saul Klein and, later, Index Ventures.

How Beautystack was born

Reid’s fascination with tech led her to close WAH Nails on its tenth anniversary and go wholly digital. Reid had realised that customers were figuring out their own workarounds when tech failed to make things effortless.

They would screenshot pictures of her nail art on the Tumblr social media site and then ask for quotes, in a clunky process. As Instagram took off, nail artists were soon posting their work and organising jobs by direct messaging.

Wouldn’t it be easier, she thought, if customers could simply click on the image of the nails they wanted and book that technician or nail artist directly? This became the blueprint for her second business, Beautystack, a dedicated digital platform for nail artists.

Sharmadean Reid's four lessons for leaders

Learn the codes before you enter the room. Reid studied the language, dress and etiquette of business as a teenage waitress long before she had any capital or contacts. Understanding how a world works from the outside is often the cheapest research a future founder can do.

Write your own founding manifesto. Before launching WAH Nails, Reid distilled her ambition into a single, rousing sentence. A clear blueprint story gives a business its north star.

Treat rejection as a numbers game. Reid's provocative pitch to Topshop only worked because she was prepared to send it after an initial no and to keep sending similar pitches elsewhere. Buyers and investors are inundated with requests, so a bold, specific pitch stands out more than a safe one.

Keep a 'not to do' list. At the height of her success with WAH Nails, Reid said yes to nearly everything, from private events to a second salon, while also becoming a parent. Growth without boundaries can quietly erode the parts of a business that made it distinctive in the first place.

Watch the full conversation with Sharmadean Reid on the Business Leader YouTube channel.

In part two of this episode, Reid explains what happened when the tech ambitions born out of WAH Nails collided with the pandemic and why her latest venture, 39BC, is built with a very different set of rules.