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Our second event was held in Auckland to coincide with the Hair and Beauty Expo, with anyone invited to attend as long as they were either qualified in or studying Nail Technology.
Day 1 was actually all about our Mentors and was optional until 6pm. Attendees could arrive any time from 9am and enter the Conference Room at 9am, 10.30am or 1.30pm. Or you could skip this and join us at 6pm for our Welcome Event.
9am - Mentor Calibration - Gel Manicures
Our Mentors were participating in a calibration session, completing services and marking each other to make sure we all mark exams the same way. They started by completing Gel Manicures to competition standards, and then marking each other. Attendees were welcome to be in the room, floor walking, critiquing and helping with the marking!
10.30am - Mentor Calibration - BIAB
Another calibration session for our Mentors, this time in BIAB. Again attendees could be in the room, floor walking, critiquing and helping with the marking.
12.30pm - Lunch
1.30pm - Mentor Calibration - French Extensions
The final calibration session, this time in French Extensions.
4.30pm - Break
Our Mentors took a break while attendees found their rooms and got acquainted with their room mates.
6pm - Welcome Event - Pub Quiz but make it NAILS!
A pub quiz-style event with teams of 4, a mix of newbies and those more experienced, with Mentor Lifelines thrown in and lots of spot prizes.
9am - Seminar 1 - Content Creation
Attendees spent an hour watching demos of all the awesome outside-the-square things you can do with your nail art supplies before having an hour to play and create art themselves. In the last hour of this session, they learnt tips and tricks for taking photos of their work before practicing what they learnt and getting real-time editing support and feedback.
12.30pm - Lunch
1.30pm - Coaching
In the afternoon session, every 30 minutes, one of our Mentors demonstrated a technique - think perfect scooching, fast soak offs, fileless BIAB, sculpted acrylic, form application and more. During this session, it was entirely up to attendees which demos (if any) that they watched. When not watching a demo, our other Mentors were floorwalking, helping attendees practice what they had seen, or any other technique of their choosing.
4.30pm - Optional - Social Media Takeover
This was a hit at the 2024 Summit so we brought it back, but we know evening events make for a long day, so it was a case of "If it sounds useful, great - if it doesn't, this is your time to recharge".
6pm - PJs and Pizza
At Summit 2025, our annual PJs and Pizza night included a couple of new features - we demoed products 'Tupperware Party' style, allowing attendees to try out products they may not have seen before. We swatched colours, demoed different systems and just generally had a play.
9am - Seminar 2 - Editorial Calendars
We were flooding our brains with content ideas, separated into the categories of 80% value and 20% selling. We talked about batching and Mentors gave examples of how we plan and schedule our content for ease and effectiveness.
9.45am - Seminar 3 - Caption Creation
Attendees were told to come to this session with 5 photos of their work or Behind The Scenes moments. We worked through a step by step guide to creating great captions before tweaking and finessing their ideas for best engagement.
10.30am - Break
11am - Open Book Competition 'Salon French' - GROUP ONE
Same rules, similar timeframe as the official NZ Nail Competitions, but attendees got to do a practice nail, have it judged, and then start the clock. While the clock was running, they could run their choices past the Mentors and receive guidance (OPEN BOOK!).
We then worked with attendees to judge and critique in a constructive way. As we always say, it's not a competition, it's training with prizes. It's no different to being on a course (which they were) and getting feedback throughout the day - EXCEPT that they had a small chance of getting a trophy.
12.45pm - Lunch
1.30pm - Open Book Competition 'Salon French' - GROUP TWO
3.15pm - Judging
6pm - Prizegiving
Less formal than 2024, the 2025 Prizegiving was a cocktail hour with nibbles, allowing competitors to leave by 8pm for a good rest (NZ Nail Comps were originally intended to be the next day, although the event was moved), and socialites to carry on.
