Profile: Sun Jung Im (Get Gelled)

   

Get Gelled can be found on Irwin Avenue in Toronto.
Photo courtesy of Facebook.

In between the hustle and bustle of Bay Street and the eclectic personality of Yonge Street, just south of high-end shopping centres on Bloor Street, sits Irwin Avenue, a quiet side street in Toronto made up of mostly small townhouses. It’s here, in an unassuming brick building, that you’ll find the nail boutique Get Gelled. Once inside, you’ll find it’s the exact opposite of the street it’s on - it’s charming, elegant and well put-together; it stands out. And so does its owner, Sun Jung Im.

The 30-year-old, who goes simply by Sun, can’t remember a time in her life when nails were not important to her.

“My mom was telling me that when I was in kindergarten, if my nails aren’t painted, I wouldn’t go to school. So she’d always paint my nails a bright red colour,” she says. “When I heard that story, I opened up the old albums, and in every single photo, if you see my nails, they’re painted red.”

  

Im says she's been passionate about
nails since she was a child.
Photo courtesy of Sun Jung Im. 

However, Im never thought about owning a nail salon. In fact, she has a diploma in hotel management, and moved across the country from London, Ont., to Whistler, B.C. to work at the Four Seasons hotel in 2008.

But when the economy experienced a downturn in 2008, Im found herself back in London, Ont., living with her mom, without a job.

After a year of an unsuccessful job search, a lot of tears, and settling for part-time work as a bartender, Hye Sook Park, Im's mother, came up with an idea.

“She told me, ‘Sun, you love to do your nails, why don’t you learn it? I think it’s a good time to learn it,’” Im recalls. She agreed, thinking of it as something that would be fun, and could help her decide if she wanted to enter the nail industry.

Unsatisfied with the limited options for learning nail art in Canada, Im began looking into the Asian market, where she says nail art has exploded in the past decade. She settled on a school in Jongno, a district in South Korea’s capital, Seoul.

Im says her program was unlike anything offered in Canada. Instead of learning cosmetology as a whole, her entire year and a half was spent focusing on nails, whether it was nail design, different nail products, or gel nails. While attending the school, she entered national nail competitions, and ended up taking first-place in one, and third in another. She also received her teaching license, and worked part-time as an educator.

After two years full of school, teaching, winning awards at national competitions, and working for local nail salons, Im had made up her mind. She wanted to do nails for the rest of her life, and she wanted to open a business in Canada. She worked out a plan with her mother, and together they decided to start up the business in Toronto. They found a condo in the city before flying back, and once they were both settled in, Im began working for all kinds of salons.

Her plan was to find out what salons in Toronto had to offer, at all levels, starting from the bottom. She started at a quick in-and-out salon, where she worked for a total of two days.

Im (left) says her mom Hye Sook Park (right)
played a big role in helping her 
get to where she is now.
Photo courtesy of Sun Jung Im.

“I didn’t want to work there for more than that,” Im says. “It was brutal. It was so dirty, and had awful customer service. They didn’t even talk to their customers!”

After that, she went on to work at a higher-end nail salon in the city. Im says after a few months of working there, she realized that there were only two types of salons available in Toronto, and both were on opposite sides of the spectrum.

“There’s nothing in the middle. So I though, okay, I’ll make this. Right in the middle. Pretty sure there are a lot of people looking for nail places that are a good price, but not too high-end, where they can get a good price and good service,” she says.

And that’s how Get Gelled came about. It wasn’t easy to get it to where it is now, in its fourth year of business. Im found the building, but knew there was serious work to be done, as the space she chose hadn’t been renovated in 30 some years. Luckily, Im’s older sister Sun Hee Im, who is an interior designer, offered a helping hand. She not only completely redesigned the interior of the salon, but she also created the company name and logo.

The salon owner also credits her mom for helping her realize her true passion, and then working with her to turn her dream into a reality.

“My mom is the world’s greatest supporter,” Im says. “She is always with me, taking good care of me, and supporting me in everything I do.”

Im officially opened the salon on Jan. 7, 2012. While business has been steady since the opening, she says she hasn’t reached the peak just yet.

“If I’m still getting a good clientele after five years, then I can say we are really successful and I’m a successful woman. But right now I can’t say anything,” she says.

For her, the most important thing about her business is to always be able to provide her clients with the best service, and to keep up-to-date with the latest trends in nail art. She says she’s always researching and studying to stay current. 

     

Im's older sister Sun Hee Im (right) created the
salon's logo and also redesigned the salon's interior.
Photo courtesy of Sun Jung Im.

As for the future, there are still a few big dreams she wants to turn into realities. Opening more Get Gelled salons around Toronto, and later down the road, across Canada, is one of them.

Another is to win the big nail competitions around the world, including in Russia, Germany, Las Vegas and Asia – all to prove to herself that she is good at what she does.

But Im’s biggest goal is the most challenging: changing people’s perceptions of her craft by teaching it.

“I want to teach whoever wants to learn. If they have a passion for learning designs I would love to teach them and share it with them,” she says. “People still think that doing nails are still a low job. They don’t see that it’s a professional job. I want to make nail artists a thing. Nail technicians… it makes it sounds like people working in a factory. This is really professional work. You have to train, and you have to go to school, which is the same as becoming a doctor, right?”

You can find more information about the salon on its website or Facebook page.