A New Nail System Wants Barbershops and Salons to Stop Improvising for Male Clients

Most salons that see male clients for manicures or pedicures handle them the same way they handle everyone else: same polish remover, same cuticle oil, same lightly scented lotion pulled from the same shelf. MANACARE, launching October 15 at getmanacare.com and through select distributors, is a bet that this improvisation is a retention problem disguised as a non-issue.

The line is built as a five-step protocol rather than a product grab-bag: a rinse-free hand foam for cleaning, an ARC buffer for finishing, a coffee-ground scrub for exfoliating, a collagen-infused recovery lotion for hydrating, and cuticle products for maintenance. That sequencing matters more than any single formula, because it gives a nail technician a repeatable service to sell and rebook rather than a one-off add-on.

Co-founder Nestor Villalobos, in comments to NAILS Magazine, traced the idea to nail techs asking for something for male clients that "doesn't smell like flowers." It is a familiar line in grooming marketing, the same instinct that has driven decades of blue-bottled shampoo and gunmetal packaging, and it signals where MANACARE is positioning itself in a debate the beauty industry has not settled.

That debate has real data behind it. Cosmetics Business has reported that genderless beauty products often underperform with actual shoppers on the shelf, even as younger male consumers increasingly resist products marketed with an explicit "for men" label as dated or condescending. MANACARE is choosing the traditional, gendered lane, which may read as reassuring to the millennial and Gen X men a barbershop or salon already serves, while risking feeling exclusionary to a Gen Z client the industry is also trying to court.

For the salon itself, the more practical question is what this system claims to do and what it stops short of. It is framed as hand and nail care, not as a treatment for underlying dermatological conditions, and its value proposition to a nail technician is procedural: a clear script for a male client's appointment, from rinse-free cleaning through cuticle maintenance, that a tech can perform consistently and a client can be sold on repeating. That is a narrower and more useful promise than most men's grooming launches make, and it is also the reason a five-step system belongs behind the chair rather than on a drugstore endcap.

The category MANACARE is entering is still a minority share of the business. Industry estimates put men at roughly 7.6 to 13 percent of nail-polish and nail-service demand, even as male pedicure demand has grown by double digits year over year in some urban markets. MANACARE is not creating a trend from nothing. Consumer brands like MANSCAPED have already built awareness with at-home nail kits, and men's manicure tutorials are an established content category online. What MANACARE is attempting is the harder, less visible work of moving that awareness from a bathroom cabinet into a professional's five-step routine, where technique and product sequencing, not branding, are what a client actually pays for.

Villalobos's own background sits in marketing rather than cosmetic chemistry. He spent years in sales and marketing at Sharp Promo and built an early career in product management at Dell and CompUSA, a resume better suited to launching a brand than formulating one. The company says it draws on 15-plus years of experience serving professional nail salons, though it has not named the manufacturer or parent relationship behind that claim, and no salon or retail partners have been announced ahead of the October 15 launch.

One more detail worth watching: MANACARE will exhibit at the San Juan Beauty Show on November 8 and 9, its first public test in front of the working nail technicians it is trying to convert. Whether the five-step pitch survives contact with a room full of professionals who already have their own routines, scented or not, will say more about the brand's chances than any press release.