After years of experimenting with nail art, Josephine Ung’s nails became brittle, and her hands were brutally dry. She reached for jojoba oil and various hand creams to resolve the issues, and they left her with greasy fingers that smudged her keyboard and the same issues.
“Hands are one of the hardest-working parts of our bodies, and I think they receive less attention than they should,” says Ung, adding, “I wanted something that I could use throughout the day, but still be able to carry on with my day or my work.”
Her new brand Vacance—the name is a nod to vacation—gives her that something she was looking for. It’s grounded in the premise that hands and nails deserve a break for repair and rejuvenation. It offers three cuticle oils—The Everyday Cuticle Oil, The Nourishing Cuticle Oil and The Soothing Cuticle Oil—in full-size 30-ml. dropper bottles and travel-size 9-ml. roll-ons for $35 and $16, respectively.
The Everyday Cuticle Oil is intended for daily use. Vacance’s hero product, Ung recommends it for people dipping their toes (literally and figuratively) into cuticle oils for the first time. The Nourishing Cuticle is geared to people prone to dry or peeling skin. The Soothing Cuticle Oil is formulated for fungal prevention. Vacance plans to stick with nail products in the short term. However, its assortment is expected to branch out to hand care-specific products in the future.
“Hands are one of the hardest-working parts of our bodies, and I think they receive less attention than they should.”
Vacance incorporates Asian ingredients Ung has eaten since she was young. A few infused into its products are daikon radish extract, goji berry seed oil, bamboo extract and lemongrass. “I could see how they worked when we had them in our sick-day recipes or when they were eaten,” says Ung. “So, for me, I wanted to look into some of those ingredients and validate them by looking into research papers and scientific studies.”
Vacance has commissioned a study with 35 participants aged 25 to 62 years old applying its cuticle oil one to two times a day for two weeks that revealed 94% noticed visible improvement in their cuticles, 91% found the skin around their nails to be less dry, and 88% experienced stronger and more flexible nails. The brand’s demographic sweet spot is consumers 24 to 50 years old, a slice of the consumer base that Ung suggests might need reminding about the importance of personal maintenance.
“Self-care sometimes can feel like a big undertaking,” she says. “For example, maybe you need to make time to do a foot bath or to sit there with a face mask, and I’m hoping that, with Vacance, people can feel like they can have those small moments of wellness anywhere.”
Ung poured $40,000 of her personal savings into launching Vacance. The largest portion of the money went to manufacturing a minimum order quantity of products. Ung, a creative strategist who studied chemistry at UC Berkeley and held sales positions technology companies such as Oracle and Adobe, handles the brand’s design, branding and formula development.
Ung got the idea for Vacance after being laid off last year from her most recent job as global head of creative solutions at Smartly, an artificial intelligence-powered advertising technology company. She says, “At that point, I actually took a break to figure out what I wanted to do next, and that break inspired me to take that opportunity to combine my creative expertise, my chemistry background as well as my passion for nail and hand care to build something of my own.”
Even prior to Vacance, Ung searched for outlets beyond her job. She began an Instagram account in 2018 to channel her creativity and showcase her talent for illustration. She’s accumulated nearly 12,000 followers and has tapped into the following to promote and highlight Vacance. Now on the account, she’s diving into what it’s like to build a small business and spotlighting other entrepreneurs of Asian descent. Vacance is running limited paid advertising on Meta to drive sales and awareness.
On social media, Ung has produced a series she’s titled, “All Hands to Good Hands,” in a reference to her transition out of the corporate world. A video from it shows how she modeled as two people in a brand photo. She says, “People were able to see how it really is to bootstrap a small business.”
To give them deeper insights into the business, Ung is considering starting Discord or Slack groups. She says, “It’d be cool to create a space where users can engage, share their nail journeys together, maybe share hand care tips, and essentially just support one another.”
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