Suzi Weiss-Fischmann - Im not really a waitress : how one woman revamped the beauty industry one color at a time

I USED TO BITE MY NAILS . C HRONICALLY, UNRESERVEDLY, obsessively.

I chewed on them any time I was nervous, and I was in the midst of gnawing a cuticle when the executive sitting across from me stopped his presentation. Ms. Weiss, he said, you know you have to stop that, right? His look said it all: the co-owner and creative director of a global nail care brand couldnt very well go around with mangled nails.

It was 1991, just eighteen months after OPI had released a debut collection that was already revolutionizing the nail care industry. With bold, trendsetting colors like Malaga Wine and Coney Island Cotton Candy, OPI had made manicures the hot new fashion essential, and women everywhere were asking for OPI by name. Public relations guru Harris Shepard, who specialized in beauty and wellness brands, had taken notice and asked for a meeting. He was right about the nail-biting. Sheepishly, I nodded and sat on my hands.

I admit my mind wasnt entirely on Harriss presentation. Though I knew wed created something special, no one had been prepared for such explosive growth. My co-founder George Schaeffer and I were working ten- and twelve-hour days, seven days a week. We hadnt given much thought to anything besides trying to keep up with customer demand, and I was anxious to get back to work. We sat through Harriss spiel, and then I asked for a moment to speak with George alone.

Ive often wondered what must have gone through Harriss head as George and I ducked into the next room and launched into loud, rapid-fire Hungarian. He probably thought we were fighting to the death, but George and I always spoke this way. Wed worked together for years, first in New York City and then at OPIs headquarters in North Hollywood, in a shared office that was so small one of us had to sit behind our desk in order for the other to get through the door. And we were family. George was my brother-in-law, and we were both Hungarian immigrants who, like so many before us, had arrived in the United States with almost nothing, risking everything to pursue the American dream. He went on and on about all the possibilities of PR and what it could do for OPI before I was finally able to break in.

George, I said, this all sounds very nicebut what is pee-are?

George, who has been silent for perhaps two minutes in the more than forty years Ive known him, stared at me openmouthed for a full ten seconds. Then he burst out laughing. After wiping tears from his face he stuck his head back in the conference room. One more minute, Mr. Shepard, he said. We are learning something! Then he collapsed into laughter again.

Apparently I felt sufficiently educated after that meeting, because we hired Mr. Shepard. No one could have known it at the time, but the three of us were about to be whisked away on a journey that would make many peoples dreams come true and transform the beauty industry in ways none of us could have imagined. Our modest family business, which improbably enough had started as a dental supply company, would become the number-one professional salon brand in the world, famous for trendsetting colors; quirky, unforgettable names (every chapter and section title in this book is named after an OPI Nail Lacquer); and groundbreaking partnerships. Weve teamed up with A-list celebrities, such as Justin Bieber, Carol Burnett, Mariah Carey, Selena Gomez, the Kardashian-Jenner clan, Cyndi Lauper, Jane Lynch, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Gwen Stefani, Carrie Underwood, Kerry Washington, and Serena Williams, and global lifestyle brands ranging from Coca-Cola and Hello Kitty! to Sonys Skyfall 007 Bond franchise, from Disney to Ford Motor Company to Dell, to create exclusive nail lacquer collections.

The OPI family would grow from George and me and our immediate families, who showed up to help fill, label, and package bottles by hand, to more than seven hundred employees housed on a seven-acre campus. Together wed create a beauty icon that even after more than thirty-seven years in the notoriously fickle beauty industry is a bestseller in more than one hundred countries.

The OPI journey continues to be a grand, improbable adventure. I have no doubt it has fashioned me into the person I was meant to be. Harris Shepard, that inscrutable purveyor of pee-are, has now been my best friend for more than twenty-five years, and perhaps he puts it best when he says that OPI led me to become my true self. From Zsuzsi Weiss, the shy, reserved schoolgirl who fled fear and oppression and arrived in this country with no English and little means, to Suzi the First Lady of Nails, the entrepreneur who put her passions for color and beauty to work to give women everywhere an unlimited means of self-expression, to Suzi Weiss-Fischmann, the wife and mother whowith a great deal of helpstill did carpool and made it to family dinners and school plays while running a multimillion-dollar business.

As you will see, if I can do this, anyone can. And yes, I even learned to stop biting my nails.