Our history:

Our first salon was established in early 2006 in the city of Broadview Heights. The salon was named LE NAILS by the previous owner that we took over from. We decided to keep the same name. And later in mid 2007, we opened a new salon in the city of Brecksville and named the new salon LE NAILS just to make local customers know that the two salons are owned and operated by the same management, just like most other businesses would do. Until Jan 2010, when we decided to open our third salon in the city of Independence, we realized that we should have a name to ourselves, a name that will not get mixed up with any other salon. After a long process of thinking and brainstorming, we decided to go with the name SOLID for the new salon and slowly would change the other two existing salons to that name. We named our business SOLID because of two main reasons. First, it's the single English word that is rarely used in any companie name making our name easier to remember. Second, we mean our business is solid, strong, with steady growth. As you may have already realized, in naming our business, we want to be different, we want to be better, as our slogan "not just another nail salon" is embeded in our logo.

 
What we do:

We offer almost all nail services except for nail wrap. In Ohio, demand for nail wrap is too weak to carry on the service. Maybe once a year we have an out of town customer that requires that service. The list of service offers ranges from natural nail such as pedicures, manicures to artificial nail such as Acrylic, UV gel, Pink & White. The most popular artificial nail is acrylic due to its strength, reasonable price, and easy maintenance while UV Gel is said to be the future of artificial nails.

We are committed to providing excellent service. We tend to take more time, if necessary, to do the job right. Though we try to staff our team with experienced technicians, we sometimes ought to accept a newly licensed or a less experienced technician. It’s just a part of a healthy team building process. We train them to do nails the right way, we train them with customer service skill. Everybody must start at some point.
We clean and sanitize everything well from pedicure bowls, towels to implement. We clean everything constantly. We equip our salon with the newest and best equipments available. We even design equipment and have them custom made to satisfy our pickiest customers. Our nail stations are designed with exhaust fan to suck the drilled dust in. That is why we don’t have as much dust as a lot of salons out there do. We use the pedicure chairs that possess glass bowls (at Solid salon in Independence right now) and magnetic jet system that are safest and most sanitary-oriented.
We greet every single customer that visits our salon and want them to know that we care and would like to earn their business. And if one disappointed customer turns around and walks out of our salon without being greeted or arranged, all the nail technicians will later regret and somebody will get yelled at.
We want to provide all the conveniences for our customers. We take appointments and we also service the walk-ins who don’t seem to have much patience. Taking both walk-ins and appointments may be much harder than you think. It makes us less efficient and less productive. It even sometimes wastes our time when an appointment doesn’t show up or simply just come 10’ late without advanced notice. We make every effort to adjust that by calling you if you don’t show up at the appointed time and try to be flexible so that we can service the walk-ins. Ironically, when you have some time to come for your nails, everybody else does too. That said, customers tend to come to nail salon at the same time. Friday and Saturday are much busier than other weekdays. Noon and 5 o’clock PM are more crowded than other hours of the day. If you can avoid those rush hours, not only do you save yourself time to wait, but you also help us to be more productive and most of all, the service will be better since there is no pressure around. We try to staff our team slightly more than what our current clientele would need. That means that we want to offer more availability to our customers to eliminate/reduce waiting time or having more openings for appointments.
We care much about how you feel about our service. If you are not happy, neither are we. Let us know if that ever happens. The manager is there to listen to your opinions or handle your complaints. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact me directly at 216-235-0237, I always feel good when my customers call me, although to complain.
We use real brand name products. A lot of nail salons out there do not use them. They save the containers from brand name product such as OPI, Seche, Creative, EZ Flow… then refill them with generic, low grade products that are bought in size of gallons. Below are some of the products that are most likely sugar branded: lotions, top coat, base coat, sugar scrub... If they have a lower service price list, they probably use lower grade materials to make up for the lost margin. You then end up having shoddy products for paying a few dollars less. We constantly search and try different manufacturers to find products that are superior but reasonably priced to offer you. We also buy them in big quantity to save cost and pass that saving to our customers. That’s why we have been able to keep the service price the same while increase the quality of materials and build better looking salons for the last 4 years in business.

What you should know about your nails:

Your cuticles:
Do not cut your cuticles. Cuticle is a part of a human body. It functions as a sealer for the nails where the nails meet the flesh. Without the cuticles, the bacteria would get in the body through that gap between the nails and the flesh and cause an infection. Moreover, the body mechanism will react by building your cuticle thicker and stronger because it falsely interprets "cuticle cutting" as your cuticle is weak and get scratched. The correct way to treat your cuticles is to push them back and trim whatever that stands up after being pushed. If you have hang nails, use a sharp cuticle nippers to nip the hang nails off. If your cuticles are dry, use lotion or for best result, use cuticle cream.

Your foot callus:
The skin on the sole of your feet are normally thicker than skin on other part of the body. I have seen many customers with a lot of callus on the soles. Removing those calluses will make your feet look soft and healthy. Nail technicians often use the "razor" to scrape off the dead skin or calluses since it's the most economical way to solve that problem. But then as the body defense mechanism kicks in and thinks that your feet are getting scratched (from the scraping), it will build you calluses stronger and thicker, resulting in worse condition. In addition, using the razor is a risky practice. Even the nail technician is very careful, cutting someone is nothing strange since the razor can be very damaging and have very little room for mistake. Sometimes, customers even experience soreness in the next day due to a sudden reduction of the thick skin/calluses. More than 6 years ago, The Ohio State Board of Cosmetology put a ban on using the razor, which I personally think it's a correct action. If you really have much callus or cracked feet, there are more than one safe and effective way to deal with them. First, you can use a professional tool that looks like a small "cheese grater" to gently sand the callus off. This foot sander actually is a much safer version of a razor. It's designed with many small and short blades and the large contact surface that help sand your callus down safely. The small blades remove a small amount of callus each time it's pressed and the large surface will make sure that it won't overcut into your feet and still give you a much more desirable look than the razor since the razor can make your skin thin but not smooth. Second, this is a good stuff, you can use a callus remover to apply on the callus. It is a chemical that is designed to corrode away the dead skin. It also lightly corrodes your hand skin if you touch it without using gloves, be careful when you use it. When applied on the callus, this chemical will melt away dead skin and callus in a reasonable amount of time, one to three minutes is probably enough depending on how much callus and how strong the chemical is. After that, use a pumice stone or a stainless steel sander to gently sand them off until you can see the pink healthy skin appears. If you have much callus on your feet, one treatment may not be enough. With this treatment, the callus seems to come back much more slowly and less in amount. Newer and more high end salons have been offerring their customers with these treatments for the last 5 or 6 years. The tools and pricy chemicals may reduce their margin, but it really is a good practice that benefits their customers.

Lee Redmond has been growing her nails for decades.