Hacker News Reader

Comment by psadri | Hacker News Reader

I always wondered about the nail / foot spa stores. What is it about these businesses that makes them such good defaults when nothing else seems to be able to survive?

View on HN

They don't have inventory/consumables which makes money laundering easier. The low transaction cost makes paying cash normal. The primary cost is labor and they force the indentured employees to pay it back for 'living expenses'.

Your point sounds sound other than the overt insinuation that its all rooted in fraud.

Money laundering taken as a whole is estimated to be the fifth largest economy in the world. Bigger than Germany’s. He’s not wrong.

IIRC in the UK specifically it's the biggest export industry. It's why the City of London (not to be confused with the city that is called London) won't ever be broken up.

Nail salons make a lot of money. manicures and pedicures cost a lot, depending on the class level they might be $50-$500. Supplies cost almost nothing. The workers are usually immigrants making very little living in communal housing.

Same in other European countries, usually the rumors are they take advantage of business sponsorship activities, or some kind of money laundry, taxes evasion.

Cheap to patronize, low barrier to entry, and can’t be done over the internet.

Nail salons have been opening right next to each other in my area, so I've been pondering this for awhile. It may just be a question of starting capital. You don't need much to start a nail salon. They don't have special furniture (the foot places do, but I'm just talking about the manicure places). They stock only a tiny amount of supplies. They don't need a web presence, or a lot of marketing in general. They don't require special equipment or stock nontrivial amounts of dangerous chemicals.

The biggest cost is labor, but labor money isn't something you need up front, since presumably at that point you have money coming in.

I realize everyone who's watched Breaking Bad thinks it's all about money laundering, but that's not as easy to do anymore, at least where I live, and the nail salons are proliferating.

My guess would be that for middle class people, it's a simple luxury that is considered worth stretching for and reasonably easy to budget around.

One thing that isn't brought up is that businesses like these are a third space, especially for women. They go there to hang out, chat, destress. So there's always going to be demand.

Incredibly low capex and opex so once you've got it running you can basically just throttle the business in accordance with demand.

I always think that they're fronts for money laundering. They're easy to set up and don't require lots of expensive equipment and they're probably mainly cash based (never visited one, so guessing here).

Logistics. They tend to act as the maul for unethical products.

Glasgow at one point had eight American Candy Stores that were always empty but been operational for years. Not even good American Candy.

What does this mean? How do nail salons do that? Super curious.

Same in the US, they are often fronts for prostitution and other organized crime. Here in the US (I live in a deindustrialized former industrial zone) the derelict downtowns are also full of bail bondsmen, payday loan sharks, DUI lawyers, dollar stores, as well as delicious cheap ethnic food (like the kebab shops in the UK).

>the derelict downtowns are also full of bail bondsmen, payday loan sharks, DUI lawyers, dollar stores, as well as delicious cheap ethnic food (like the kebab shops in the UK).

When a lake spontaneously disappears you can see all the trash on the bottom because it's no longer obscured by the water.

When economic prosperity disappears you're left with baseline services that involve people and the government, because all the other activity that was obscuring it is gone.

Not sure exactly what the previous content was referring to, but many salons (not just nail salons) also sell some of the products that they use (or claim to use) or knock-offs thereof, sometimes "under the counter". I can't see this making enough to cover high street rents though, however good the kick-back is, but it can't hurt too have an extra revenue stream.

they're saying they're drug fronts / money laundering

just curious, what do you consider 'good' American candy?

I mean, Ghirardelli chocolate is nice, and I am fond of Junior Mints & Bit-O-Honey..but you can miss me with most Hershey and/or Mars products.

Laundry.

Laundries w/ wifi, I have found, are far superior to working at than coffee shops.

Built in white noise generator too!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com