Meet Cici DiOrio | press on nail tech

We had the good fortune of connecting with Cici DiOrio and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Cici, what role has risk played in your life or career?
The idea that you have to know what you’re doing to start a business, or have a lot of money, or fancy supplies. all of that is whole heartedly false. you truly do not have to know what you’re doing. you just have to trust what you’re doing. I was 16 when I started my business, in the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic no less. I was a high-school sophmore, who needed some extra cash and didn’t want to work a typical high-school job. all the salons had shut down, and local girls and girls from school knew I painted press on nails. they would pay me $10 to $15 for a set of press on nails. I had maybe $50 in cash to start and I had my mother drive me to mail boxes to deliver nails and pick up cash. I only opened a bank account that April and finally could except digital payments, I wasn’t even shipping products until July nor did I even have a website or etsy. I had a google form that was linked in my social media and I sent emails and texts to follow up with the order information. I didn’t even make a website until after my business boomed. I took everyday as it came, and continue to do so. my business flourished after a tik tok I had made went viral. I ended up with 1,000 orders over night. I called up my girlfriends and they rushed over to help. we worked for a month straight. I stayed up until 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning and slept until 7 o’clock in the morning. then I logged online for my virtual school classes and just turned my camera off and got back to work. looking back at it, I don’t have any idea about how I did it, other than I just did. I was 17 years-old. I was barely a junior in high-school. every single day was a risk. I would take laundry baskets of packages that had hand written labels to the post office. I talked to every single customer almost every single day. I lived like that for months,

in august of 2021 I had my second risk to take, which was whether or not I wanted to sell my nails in a store, A local small boutique named Boheme Pittsburgh had reached out to me, and asked me to come tour their new space, within 20 minutes of being there I decided that was where I needed to be. they emailed me a lease agreement, I signed and moved into my own space in the store the following month.

every single step of my business has been a risk, and I am so blessed for every outcome.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
When I was a little girl my grandmother purchased me a nail art kit I had circled in a children’s magazine around the time of my birthday. It had a booklet on how to paint ladybugs and puppy dog faces, I was obsessed. Now I’m 16. It has been about two weeks since the covid pandemic erupted, and I was struggling mentally and needed money. After salons closed, I made fake nail press-ons for my girlfriends and school girls. I charged $10 bucks for twenty nails, and my mother drove me around while I delivered them to mailboxes. My business grew rapidly; I sent my first shipment of nails by July of 2020. By October, I was shipping all over the east coast, not too serious but my name was getting out there. By 5 am on Sunday, November 22nd, I had 23,000 followers, the video had 130,000 likes, and it had 980,000 views. In my Instagram and TikTik bio, I linked a google form to sell nails. It was not an automated process, we wrote everything in notebooks by hand. There were hundreds of people interested in buying nails and no website to buy from. I called my girlfriends, who came over and started messaging these people on messages, Instagram, Snapchat, or however they preferred to be contacted. My dining room wall was covered with post-it notes of orders as I worked for a month straight. During that time, I signed online for my classes remotely as a result of the pandemic. I painted nails from around 9 a.m. to 2 a.m that night. Many nights I spent working in the dark house while my family slept, except by the night of my lamp. By the first week of December, I had sent nails to every state in America at least twice, including Hawaii and Alaska. My friends would come after classes ended, or at lunch period when there was enough time to drive to my house and log on to school. I would throw my friend Anna $50 and tell her to pick up some pizzas for dinner on her way over as she was the only one with a license. We were juniors in high school, we didn’t have a clue what we were doing and as the owner, I had no idea what to do, but we made it work and that made every single day enticing. My business boomed, literally overnight and I am so thankful to say that I have only gone up since then. In February I had befriended a young woman known as Thegodmutha on TikTok who also stared In families of the mafia, Staten island on MTV and she even wore my nails on the Wendy Williams show! When May rolled around, I was shipping to Canada, I started doing local craft and vendor shows in Pittsburgh in the summer and by August, two weeks before my senior year of high school started I had signed a lease for my own section of a boutique in Lawrenceville called Boheme Pittsburgh. When I returned to school it was a big deal, the school media club ran two articles on me in the district newspaper, and then I did an all-day workshop teaching other students about my nails and my business. I accomplished my dream in under 10 months, and I’ve only grown since then. I have grown as a company, but most importantly as a person. Cici’s Nails quickly became a community. Where my customers became friends and my story started touching hearts. The hundreds of messages I receive daily from people my age to older that tell me how I have inspired them, how they have gone back to a trade school or opened their own online business. I started this dream at 16 and have been so fortunate as to what it has taught me. I couldn’t be more thankful.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I am a Pittsburgh girl at heart, It’s my home. I would absolutely take them to Lawrenceville to See Boheme and this little create your own candle place down the street. the next stop would be the strip district on the south side so we could stop in Enrico Biscotti Company for cookies, and grandpa joe’s candy shop. then probably the point if the fountain was on. then one of the inclines, which ever one was closer. I would probably end the day downtown at Randy land or the mattress factory. Honestly, where ever you go in Pittsburgh, you’re going to meet all kind of wonderful different people and experience all different walks of life in every single little pocket of pittsburgh.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I definitely want the recognition to follow a few special people. My two best friend’s, Anna Wageley and Kira Williams. Sarah and MG from Boheme who have supported and believed in me very step of the way, and My dad, who is an entrepreneur himself and who I learned the most from.

Website: https://www.cicisnails.com/

Instagram: @cicis.nails

Other: tiktok- @cicis.nails