BACKGROUND

Revel Nail is currently located in Blackwood NJ and has over 190 employees. The manufacturer, founded in 2006, develops alternative nail products safer than acrylic polishes.

This company is the embodiment of the American dream. The founders began by bottling their product on their kitchen table and later grew to a small, run-down warehouse in Deptford NJ. Both owners were working full-time jobs in addition to building the business. Phon Malone, CEO, even developed a novel product named Up2You, allowing people to create gel polish out of their favorite nail polish color. This product, in addition to its dip powder, accelerated the company’s growth. This allowed them to move into a bigger warehouse and sell to larger brands. All this growth took place over a few short years.

Leadership is always looking to improve the brand and the Revel Nail line of products. This culture has helped them grow their business to become an international name. Continued growth at this rate does not come without growing pains.

CHALLENGES

Continuous improvement is built into the Revel Nail culture. Revel Nail is constantly striving to be a leader in the industry. In 2019 they began to explore Lean to overcome a massive but welcomed challenge; “we literally had too many orders for us to process,” said Phon Malone, CEO Revel Nail.

This New Jersey manufacturer faced a similar challenge many growing businesses experience. They were struggling to keep up with demand because of production delays.

Revel Nail is focusing on international growth. Their New Jersey facility must be able to keep up with demand. Growth and a massive influx of orders are always exciting, but they can cause production delays when lines aren’t efficient. Revel Nail has been growing for seven years. The manufacturer outgrew five facilities in the first five years. Managers at Revel Nail were not familiar with the best way to solve their production bottlenecks, Lean Manufacturing.

SOLUTIONS

NJMEP conducted a complimentary business assessment with Revel Nail to identify where they were struggling and areas that leadership wanted to improve. The challenges identified were production delays stopping the manufacturer from keeping up with demand. Lean Manufacturing training and organization was identified as the best solution for the growing New Jersey manufacturing business.

12 separate production organization initiatives, training, and educational activates were held throughout the year-long Lean Manufacturing project. Employees were introduced to Lean as a concept, NJMEP worked with Revel Nail to “Lean” their facility and implement best practices, and hands-on Live simulation training was conducted. The training was constantly reinforced by leadership through tools and best practices provided by the Lean facilitator. NJMEP’s account manager continued to engage with Revel Nail leadership to provide support and guidance throughout the journey. Revel Nail’s leadership was active and engaged, ensuring the success of this progressive step forward in the business’ culture.

Below are examples of Lean exercises that were conducted with Revel Nail:

• Value Stream Mapping
• Introduction to Lean Manufacturing
• Lean Employee Training
• Lean Overview with Live Simulation
• Lean Workplace Organization
• Implementing 5s for Workplace Organizations
• Lean Setup and Reduction

RESULTS

Revel Nail was thrilled with the results of the Lean training provided by NJMEP. Investing in their workforce provided an undeniable ROI. Coupled with the fact that NJMEP worked with the State to ensure all manufacturing was considered essential during the pandemic, Revel Nail was able to continue producing their products, kept their workforce employed, and provided an economic boost to their local community.

Revel Nail recorded the following impact during their NIST survey conducted 6-12 months after the conclusion of the Lean Manufacturing project with NJMEP:

• INCREASED SALES: $30,000,000
• EMPLOYEE CREATION: 100
• RETAINED SALES: $5,000,000
• RETAINED EMPLOYEES: 90
• COST SAVINGS: $3,000,000

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