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AIPROPX ReportFortune · 2h ago
Meet the jet-setting fashion editor who turned a New York manicure at 23 into Nails.Inc—Despite selling for $40 million, she…
Thea Green was a 23-year-old jet-setting fashion editor for Tatler magazine when she noticed something no one else had: She was grabbing last-minute speedy manicures between meetings on every trip to New York or LA—nowhere back home in the U.K. offered that service for your nails yet. And just like that, Nails.Inc was born in 1999. Twenty-six years later, the company says it sells one nail polish every single minute.
She had no background in beauty and no business plan when she launched a 70-shade polish range and opened her first nail bar that year. But having watched her dad work his way up from a tea boy to a retail director gave her all the proof she needed that “hard work and a good idea could take you anywhere,” Green tells Fortune .
Vogue magazine’s HQ was just around the corner, and staff there started combining client meetings with manicures. The lines quickly followed.
Fenwick’s came next, the first department store to give Green’s business a beauty concession—it marked the first time a service, rather than a product, sat in a beauty hall. “People worried women wouldn’t want to get their nails done in public, but I knew convenience would win over privacy,” she says.
Harvey Nichols and Selfridges came next, before she decided to start selling to the masses and selling her nail varnish in major retailers: Boots in the U.K, Sephora in the U.S.
By the late 2000s, she was expanding in the U.S. and needed to build awareness on a tight budget. Green turned to collaborations before most beauty brands were doing it. “Alexa Chung was one of our first, and it flew off the shelves,” she adds. Then came collaborations with Victoria Beckham, Magnum, even McDonald’s.
And she did it all while raising a family: two sons and a daughter. She’d go through her emails before they woke up, split the school run with her husband (who also happens to be an entrepreneur), do calls on the way back home from the office, and log back on after bath time.
Today, the 50-year-old founder lives in leafy West London with her husband, three children, and dog named Sunday. Green sold Nails.Inc at the end of 2024 to the American private equity group Pacific World Corporation in a reported £30 million ($40 million) deal—but she’s stayed on as chair. She says the company achieved its highest ever turnover in 2025 at $34.7 million, “and every signal points to that being surpassed in 2026.” Meanwhile, its products are now stocked in over 30 countries, with its newest range, It’s Topless, selling at a rate of one bottle a minute in the U.K. alone.
But when she looks back, she says the proudest moments aren’t the big deals; they’re often the smaller ones along the way: “The first queue outside the bar. A customer asking for a shade by name when we had only been live for a few weeks. It’s important to celebrate those small wins—they’re the things that get you to the big ones.”
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Fortune ’s series, The Good Life , shows how up-and-coming leaders spend their time and money outside of work.
Being in the C-suite is a high-pressure job with long hours, board responsibilities, and intense scrutiny. But what is it like to be a top executive when you’re off the clock? Here’s what she told us.
The Money
What’s the best financial decision you’ve ever made—and how much did it make or save you?
Holding my nerve on pricing. Every instinct when you’re young and unknown is to price low and win on volume. Resisting that let us build real brand equity—worth far more in the long run than any single deal.
And the worst?
Ordering against excitement rather than confirmed demand. If I was doing it again I would launch with a tighter assortment—you can always expand the range later.
What’s in your wallet?
Not cash. Club memberships and stamps, as I love sending family and friends cards.
What’s the one area of your life where you’re surprisingly tight with money, even now?
I can’t bear to waste money on anything that doesn’t have a long shelf life: plastic toys, tech games that go out of fashion, clutter. Only flowers can be regularly replaced, everything else should be built to last
What’s your most ridiculous ongoing expense?
I seem to buy a lot of AirPods as I often lose one—ridiculous product but too convenient to ditch.
Do you invest in shares?
Yes. I invest in boring stuff, not trends, and I play the long game. I invest with my husband in the stock market, and then I have made some investments in a number of exciting female founder businesses: Better Menopause, Luna Daily, Dot Dot Bubble Tea.
What personal finance advice would you give your 20-year-old self?
Save early; if it’s not keeping you up at night, you don’t need it. Teach kids to save and invest as our schools don’t!
The Routine
What are your living arrangements like: Swanky apartment in the city or suburban sprawling?
I live in West London with my husband and three children. The commute into central London is easy and I tend to walk with my pup and get my steps in—I walk a good hour, and I try to use it to think or listen to podcasts, but it’s also a good time to fit in important calls.
How have you managed the juggle between work and family—and what has it cost you, financially and personally?
With strong support and a great husband, it becomes manageable. Though I won’t pretend it’s effortless. Childcare is a real investment and rarely guilt-free, but once your kids can tell you what’s important to them, it gets easier. I have also accepted that you don’t win on all fronts all the time.
Courtesy of Catchpole Communications
What does your morning routine actually look like—be honest?
I wake up at 5.45 a.m., get outside and work out first in morning light to help my circadian rhythm and manage stress. Then I look over my diary, plan, do my skincare, and make tea to take on the go. Take lots ...
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