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Former Doc Runs Beauty School; Looking to Hispanics for Future

Tam Nguyen traded in his stethoscope for a nail file.

The onetime doctor stunned his mother when he went back to California State University, Fullerton, to get his business master’s.

After all, it was his parents’ dream for him to become a doctor.

But Nguyen’s passion was business.

The 32-year-old now is running the business his parents started, Advance Beauty College, a nail, cosmetology and massage therapy school in Garden Grove. He owns it with sister Linh Nguyen, who handles operations and is director of education.

Mom is semi-retired. Dad spends his time in Vietnam.

“He’s sitting on a beach in Vietnam right now,” Nguyen said of his father, Minh Tam Nguyen. “He only comes back for family events.”

Advance Beauty College has 300 students and a staff of 20. It is one of about 10 beauty schools in Little Saigon, which runs through parts of Westminster, Garden Grove and Santa Ana.

The area is home to more than 300,000 people and is the largest Vietnamese population outside Vietnam.

Advance Beauty College is one of the few accredited schools in Little Saigon, which gives its graduates a leg up with salons, Nguyen said.

Accreditation means the college can offer financial aid, a plus since Nguyen said Advance Beauty College is one of the most expensive,from $400 to $7,000. Classes are taught in PowerPoint on plasma TV screens.

“We offer the best education,” he said. “Our pass rates are clearing 90%. Our student retention is excellent.”

“They’ve got an amazing business,” said Cyndy Drummey, publisher of Nails, an industry magazine.

For a time, the industry was plagued with perceptions of being unsanitary and unprofessional. Advance Beauty College has been able to boost education in the industry, she said.

Nguyen said he chalks up better quality and customer service to savvy second-generation ownership that has bridged Vietnamese and American styles of business.

The nail business has proven lucrative for OC’s Vietnamese.

“What other occupation in this great country can you go to school for 400 hours, make a great living, have English as a second language, be hard working and own your own business in a very short time,” Nguyen said.


First Salon

The Nguyens first opened a nail salon in 1977. They were pioneers in expanding the nail salon business, which began in Southern California. There are about 50,000 nail salons in California. Vietnamese own 80% of them in the state and 60% nationwide, Nguyen said.

The nail business is a $6 billion yearly industry, according to Drummey.

Nguyen and others are looking beyond the Vietnamese, who, at best, are growing in line with the county’s overall population. They’re setting their sights on the fastest,growing group in the county, and the state for that matter: Hispanics.

Advance Beauty College and Tustin-based Happy Nails Co.,the largest nail salon operator in the state, owned by Henry and Mai Huynh,plan to open colleges geared to Hispanics.

Next year they’re are set to open schools in Corona and San Diego. They plan to market those to Hispanic immigrants so they can open their own salons.

The shift is inevitable. The big wave of immigration from Vietnam is over. And second and third generation Vietnamese here aren’t as interested in doing nails.

But for the legions of Hispanic immigrants here, the job could be a way to get a start, just as their Vietnamese counterparts did in the 1970s and ’80s.

Nguyen, who speaks Spanish, said he plans to hire Spanish-speaking teachers. He said he sees parallels between Hispanic and Vietnamese cultures. Both have strong family bonds and similar work ethics.

“Every immigrant’s goal is to own their own business,” he said.

There are few beauty school dropouts.

“Vietnamese are tenacious about education,” Nguyen said. “If you can’t finish financially, it’s understood that not only are your parents going to help you, but your brothers and sisters are going to help you, and all of your uncles, aunts and cousins are going to help you finish.”

One large family of Vietnamese immigrants,14 of them,drove daily from Modesto to Garden Grove to take the manicuring program, he said. Their sponsor, a family member and owner of a few salons, was in need of nail technicians. The family recently graduated together, Nguyen said.


Vietnamese Dominate

For now, most Advance Beauty College students are Vietnamese. Classes are taught in English and Vietnamese. State tests are offered in both languages. The school recruits teachers by advertising in Vietnamese newspapers.

Nguyen’s sister sets up the training curriculum. Teachers are paid $10 to $16 an hour, he said.

The school’s most popular program: manicuring. It takes a short time to learn, it’s creative, quick money and English isn’t a necessity, Nguyen said.

Skin care is the biggest program in terms of sales. Nguyen said he started the massage therapy program after medical school.

“I was the only instructor at one point,” Nguyen said.

That program, growing with the booming spa industry, now has five teachers.

Nguyen’s mother, Kien Tam, now feels differently about her son’s choice to join the family business.

“I’m proud,” she said.

His father is a retired U.S. Naval officer turned social worker turned cosmetologist. He’s enjoying semi-retirement after years of working 16-hour days.

Minh Tam Nguyen brought his family to the U.S. in 1975 with the help of a U.S. sponsor family.

He grew up in a poor village called Ha Nam in northern Vietnam.

Following the end of the Vietnam War, the Nguyens arrived at Camp Pendleton, one of a handful of refugee camps. Tam Nguyen was only a year old. His mother was pregnant with his sister. They were taken in by a family in Santa Cruz.

His parents took jobs as dishwashers and janitors. His mom, who was a beautician in Saigon, decided to take up her trade here, he said. She went to school and was one of the first Vietnamese to pass the state test.

At first she rented a station at a salon. Then she bought a West Covina business in 1977 with $1,500 down and $10,000 in payments.

Her shop was called Tam’s Beauty Salon.

Nguyen’s dad also opened a salon called Personality Beauty Salon.

“We spent a lot of our childhood in those two beauty salons,” Nguyen said.

They sold the shops and opened a college in 1987 in Westminster, where they leased a building. The family now owns its Garden Grove facility, where the college moved in 1991.

The family lived in Walnut and his father commuted daily to manage the school in Little Saigon.

“He was always the creator of business. My mom was always the great operator,” Nguyen said.

His father has brought his success back to Vietnam. He’s donated $50,000 to open a school and set up a scholarship fund there.

Minh Tam Nguyen also is helping to set up a 9,000-square-foot Advance Beauty College there, nearly double the size of the Garden Grove school.

Advance Beauty College and Happy Nails are opening the Vietnam school together.


Giving Back

Like his father, Nguyen gives back to his birth country. Every November, he visits Vietnam as a doctor on pediatric medical missions organized by Garden Grove-based Project Vietnam.

“I am always trying to move on my dad’s ideas and his vision for our community and what more we could do to help,” he said.

The Nguyens also are tied to their local community. It was his father’s vision to help grow the nail industry in Little Saigon, not only to support his family but also to create jobs for future waves of Vietnamese immigrants, Nguyen said.

VietSalon magazine recently named Nguyen and his sister as top brother and sister owners,there are several Vietnamese brother and sister owners nationwide. They also were featured as role models on KSCI, an Asian-American TV station in Los Angeles.

The two don’t always get along, he said.

“I’m very opinionated and so is she,” Nguyen said.

But at work it’s all business.

“We could be working for someone else or come in here as brother and sister and make it work,” he said.

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