Nails Industry Association Gone, But Its Mission Endures

The dissolution this year of the Nails Industry Association caused me great personal distress. Launched seven years ago by this magazine and our parent company, NIA was, for a while, a strong healthy industry association, with great promise, a realistic agenda, and the involvement of some of the top nail professionals in the industry. Our original mission with NIA was to support, educate, and protect nail professionals, and although we may have ultimately “filed” to that, the growth of new, more regional associations, and the promise of more future global associations, is encouraging.

What happened was simple. The expense of running a truly national association and fulfilling the needs of our members was greater than the income received from membership dues or industry support. We simply could not afford to keep it going and we did not feel that we had either the membership or industry support to carry it though the difficult time.

We approached leading cosmetology associations to find a suitable group to handle the needs of our membership and ensure its longevity but we unable to interest any of them in NIA for a variety of reasons, mostly related to the fact that they had problems of their own.

It was a regrettable choice we had to make. NAILS Magazine has been very supportive since the beginning of NIA, and we remain committed to its missions. We’ll continue helping nail technicians achieve some of the important goals we set out, including developing guidelines of MMA, sanitation, speaking on behalf of nail professionals to the consumer media and voicing our concerns with the manufacturers. And we will continue to support and encourage any other associations that server nail professionals and promise to protect, support, and educate nail professionals and the nail industry.