CINCINNATI — Some small business owners are still struggling to get back on their feet almost two years after the pandemic shutdowns. One woman nearly lost everything because of it.
For Jyana Jones, nails are more than just that.
“I feel like the body is a canvas. Your nails are (a) tiny canvas,'” said Jones.
She turned nails into art and started making a living doing it.
“I was only gonna do nails for a brief time while I was in college, but here, 26 years later, I’m still doing it,” said Jones.
She’d been traveling from house-to-house creating nail art and planned to one day have her own nail shop, with her mom, a hairstylist, but COVID changed all of that.
“I’m a single mom so I’m like panicking,” said Jones.
The 2020 pandemic shutdowns forced the mother of two out of business that March, and by April, something else would happen that caused her to shut down.
“It was very sudden and very traumatic for me ’cause it’s like, not only did I lose my best friend, my mother, but my daughter’s other mother, my co-parenting teammate,” said Jones.
Her mom died of a heart attack, but in that pain, she found the strength to keep going.
She started working again in a friend’s salon the next year, but COVID variants meant business was slow.
“People are still getting sick, people are still out of work, so with nail services, it’s like a luxury. It’s not a necessity, so we’re sometimes the last thing that’s on people’s minds. So yeah, I had to go to social media,” said Jones.
Social media posts helped her build up enough business to open the doors to her own shop, a shop she hopes to expand with her mom as inspiration.
“It’s been a struggle, but I know, she would be so proud of me,” said Jones of her mother.
