High Five

F18 Cohort Spotlights

Meet Annie and Bao — two amazing founders who reinvented the nail salon, to empower women on both sides of the manicure table.

Bao and Annie offer efficient 30-minute manicures that fit seamlessly into everyone’s day while providing fair compensation and meaningful career opportunities for their team.

Bring High Five to your office, campus, or private event, or book an appointment an upcoming pop-up. Check us out at wehighfive.com!

The High Five team believes that “take on the world” feeling of fresh nails shouldn’t come at the expense of an unpleasant salon experience or underpaid nail techs. Their vision is to reinvent the nail services industry by building a consolidated consumer brand and leveraging their more efficient business model to provide fair pay and supportive working conditions for their team.

Annie and Bao both come from diverse and unique backgrounds:

• Annie comes from the art world and grew up drawing and painting, but never could have predicted that she would apply her painting skills to tiny nail canvases!
• Bao grew up working in her parents’ nail salon in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is the resident expert on all the tiny details that come together to run an amazing salon.

They’re an amazing team with a great idea. But, what’s next? You may wonder…

In our conversation, they said they are currently focused on delivering consistently high quality manicures in 30 minutes flat at events throughout the Bay Area through their mobile events. Every day they learn valuable new insights about how to refine the business, and in the next year they hope to apply that operation playbook to their first brick-and-mortar store. They state:

Ultimately, through a combination of mobile events, retail locations, and products, we aim to transform self care from a chore to a delight and make women’s lives just a little bit easier.

For the reader

“I have…” We’re currently hiring an Operations Lead! Hungry to learn more? Annie was recently interviewed on Bring the Real, a podcast produced by a Portland-based branding agency called IDL. Tune in here!

“I need…” Does High Five sound like a good fit for your sorority, team bonding event, or next birthday party? Drop us a line at hello@wehighfive.com and let’s make it happen!