Why I Created Tayla-Made Nail Co.

When I started Colour Me Pretty around 13–14 years ago, I didn't sit down with a business plan and carefully construct a brand. It just happened.

CMP burst into the Australian nail industry at a time when social media — particularly Facebook — wasn't being used by businesses the way it is today. I was already in the nail groups. I knew the people who were vocal, trusted and influential within those communities — long before we were calling them influencers. So I gave them CMP products to try. There were no elaborate campaigns. No huge marketing budgets. I let the products speak for themselves. And they did.

At the time, the Australian professional nail market was dominated by many of the big-name brands, and a bottle of gel polish could come with an equally big price tag. As I learnt more about the industry, I began to understand just how significant some of those mark-ups were. I wanted to do something different. I wanted Australian nail techs to have access to great professional nail products at affordable prices — without paying for all the fancy trimmings surrounding them.

That became Colour Me Pretty. And CMP did exactly what I created it to do. Over the years, it grew into an enormous range. We eventually carried well over 1,000 colours, along with countless other products, and built a loyal customer base around Australia & New Zealand.

But the industry didn't stand still. And eventually, neither could I.

Over 13–14 years, the nail industry changed enormously. New suppliers entered the market. Social media marketing became the norm. The market became increasingly saturated.

Then COVID changed the industry again. Many of the home-based nail techs who had been part of CMP's original customer base closed their businesses. The cost of living increased. Customers became more conscious of where they were spending their money.

And the way I had always operated CMP — keeping large quantities of a huge range in stock so I could cater for everyone — stopped making as much sense. When sales volumes change, stock doesn't move at the same rate. And professional nail products aren't something you can simply leave sitting on a shelf indefinitely. Eventually, we reached the point where we had to dispose of approximately 25,000 bottles of ageing stock.

That was a pretty confronting moment. It made me seriously consider what came next. Do I close the doors? Do I completely rebrand CMP? Or do I take everything I've learnt over more than a decade and build something new?

Not because CMP had failed. Quite the opposite. CMP had already taught me how to build a nail brand. It had taught me what works. It had also taught me what I would do differently if I ever had the opportunity to start again. And suddenly, I had that opportunity.

I realised I didn't want to simply give CMP a new logo and pretend it was something new. Completely rebuilding such a large and established brand would also be enormously expensive. Instead, I wanted to start with a clean slate. Take everything CMP got right. Learn from everything I would change. Look at what today's nail tech actually wants. And build the brand properly from the beginning.

That became Tayla-Made Nail Co.

Starting Tayla-Made was never about deciding that Colour Me Pretty was no longer good enough. I still believe in CMP and the products we have built over the years. If I didn't, I could have simply closed the doors and walked away from it altogether.

Instead, the majority of the Colour Me Pretty range will continue to run alongside Tayla-Made. The two brands are not competing with each other, and Tayla-Made is not here to make CMP obsolete. CMP remains a professional range I believe in fully. Tayla-Made is simply the opportunity to build something new for the way the industry has evolved — using everything CMP taught me while doing some things differently from the beginning.

Your existing Colour Me Pretty products still have a place. They are compatible with the Tayla-Made system, and I want customers to be able to use the products they already own rather than feel they need to start their collection all over again.

The nail industry today looks very different from the one CMP entered all those years ago. And nail techs want different things.

They want products that perform — but they also want products they're proud to have sitting on their nail desk. So we gave Tayla-Made the luxe packaging I never prioritised when I created CMP. Matte white bottles. Beautiful metallic details. Cohesive branding. Packaging designed to look as professional as the product inside it.

Nail techs want products that make application easier. So we sourced bottles with curved, rounded precision brushes designed to help with controlled application around the cuticle area.

Nail techs want products that can perform more than one job — when combining those functions genuinely makes sense. So we spent months sourcing and testing products such as The Foundation 6 in 1, rather than creating multiple products simply for the sake of filling shelves.

Nail techs are increasingly looking for HEMA Free and TPO Free formulations. So that became part of the direction for the Tayla-Made gel system.

And perhaps most importantly, I've learnt that more isn't always better. CMP grew to more than 1,000 colours. Tayla-Made doesn't need to.

One of the biggest things I wanted to change was complexity. Over the years, the nail industry has become filled with clever product names, different systems and terminology that can sometimes leave you wondering what a product actually does or where it fits into your service. I didn't want that for Tayla-Made.

So I stripped it right back to basics. The Base is the base coat. The Dehydrator dehydrates the nail. The Bonder promotes adhesion. The Builder builds structure. The Gloss Top Coat gives you gloss. The Matte Top Coat gives you matte. You shouldn't need to decode a product name before you can work out what is inside the bottle.

I wanted a nail tech to look at their Tayla-Made products and immediately know what each one is, what it does and where it belongs in the system. And because the naming is simple, the system itself flows. Prep. Bond. Base or structure. Colour. Finish.

There are products such as The Foundation 6 in 1 that do more than one job — but even then, its name has a purpose. It's designed to be the foundation of so many different services. Everything has a place. Everything has a reason for being there. And nothing needs a complicated name just to make it sound more impressive.

Professional nail products don't need to be confusing to be professional. That simplicity is something I wanted built into Tayla-Made from the very beginning.

One thing most of us have probably done as nail techs is buy products we don't actually need. We see something pretty. We watch another nail tech use it. We convince ourselves we need that art product, that colour, that tool or that new system too. Before you know it, you've spent hundreds — sometimes thousands — of dollars building a collection of products and nail art that may barely be used again, sometimes before your own business has even started making that money back.

I don't want Tayla-Made to encourage that. It's one of the reasons I've deliberately looked for products that can do more than one job when it genuinely makes sense. The Foundation 6 in 1 is a perfect example. If one excellent product can perform several useful functions, I would rather give you that than sell you several separate bottles simply because I can.

It's also why I intend to keep the Tayla-Made core range relatively small and focused on products that earn their place in the system. There will be new products and limited editions, but I don't want to fill shelves just for the sake of having more to sell. I want the products you invest in to be products you actually use.

Because I want to see your business thrive. If your business is healthy, profitable and successful, then ours has the opportunity to be successful alongside you. To me, that's a much better long-term relationship than convincing you to buy something you don't need.

Tayla-Made will have a carefully considered core range, supported by limited editions and new releases where they genuinely add something worthwhile. We're starting smaller. But we're doing it deliberately.

Products have been sourced, tested and refined for more than six months before launch. We've created branded packaging. We've developed extensive Professional Product Guides so nail techs don't simply receive a bottle — they can understand what the product does, why it behaves the way it does and how to use it correctly.

We've created The Base Colour as a curated core colour range rather than trying to offer every possible shade imaginable. We've even created a professional physical colour display containing the Base Colour collection so salons can display the range beautifully and clients can choose their next colour — without nail techs spending hours and hours painting swatches themselves.

We've updated our website, refreshed our branding and lifted the entire presentation of the business to reflect where we are going next. This is our glow-up. But it's much more than a new look.

These might sound like small details — the name on a bottle, the shape of a brush, the way a colour is displayed, the information that comes with a product — but to me, they're not small at all. They're the difference between simply selling nail products and thoughtfully building a professional nail system.

This part is personal. Tayla is my daughter. It's a beautiful name belonging to a beautiful girl, and I wanted that beauty reflected throughout the brand carrying her name.

But there was another reason it felt perfect. Tayla-Made. Tailor-made. Made with purpose. Made thoughtfully. Made for the people who will actually use it. Once I saw the connection, there really wasn't another name.

And while Tayla-Made is a new brand, it hasn't appeared from nowhere. Behind it sits more than a decade of experience, mistakes, successes, customer feedback, product knowledge and everything I've learnt building Colour Me Pretty. In many ways, it is: Tayla-Made Nail Co. by CMP.

Tayla-Made isn't launching with hundreds upon hundreds of products simply so we can say we have them. The range will grow. But when we add something, I want there to be a reason for it. We'll listen to our customers. We'll continue testing. We'll introduce new products carefully and correctly. And we'll do our best to get things right the first time.

Because this time I haven't stumbled into building a brand. I'm building one intentionally. Tayla-Made is everything I've learnt from Colour Me Pretty — the things we got right, the things I would do differently, and the things the nail industry needs now rather than what it needed 14 years ago.

CMP was where I learnt how to do this. Tayla-Made is what I'm doing with everything I've learnt. And we're only just getting started.