Meet Gina: Glaize's CEO, co-founder & mani queen

One half of the brains behind Glaize, Gina is our co-founder and CEO and appreciates a goooood manicure more than anyone!

If you didn’t know, Glaize was founded by Gina and Chris (our other co-founder) in March 2020, right before the first nationwide lockdown hit London. Talk about nail-biting circumstances!

Take it away Gina...

My love for manicures started while I was growing up in Lebanon, a country known for being the beauty and style hub of the Middle East despite all its troubles. Like the majority of the Lebanese youth, I was unfortunately forced to leave Beirut in search of a better career so after completing my studies in France, I moved to Dubai and then London where I worked in the incredibly demanding world of investment banking, where deadlines were always tight and there was very little downtime for manicures. It may sound frivolous to some but not having my nails done or having chipped nails during a client meeting made me feel insecure and not well put together. I was on the hunt for an easier nail care solution but all the quick fixes looked cheap or didn’t fit my nails properly. So when I couldn’t find the solution I was looking for, I decided to build it. This is basically how I came up with the initial idea for Glaize.

After extensive industry research and a lot of customer surveys and interviews, Chris and I decided to team up after meeting at an accelerator and turn Glaize into reality. Essentially, Chris and I wanted to create a nail care brand that disrupted a dusty industry. The deeper we dug, the more we realised that the products we still use today hadn’t evolved much since their invention, both in terms of application and chemical composition (which is mostly nasty stuff that’s filled with microplastics btw).

We've been building our product and tech from scratch for almost two years in the middle of a global pandemic and if I’m being very honest with you, it’s been incredibly hard. We’ve got a lot of stories - some happy, some sad, a lot of failures and iterations, and a whole lot of sweat, blood and tears that has gone into Glaize despite us still being at the very beginning of our hopefully long and successful journey which we really hope you join us on.

We can’t wait to continue sharing our progress with you and we hope our products bring you lots of happiness (and of course COLOUR!).

Thank you,

Gina Farran

Glaize co-founder & CEO