I recently returned from conducting a seminar on the Balance UV Gel System and Attraction Acrylic System for 91 nail technicians and salon owners. The seminar was held in Malta, a tiny little island country smack dab in the middle of the Mediterranean.
I had never heard of Malta until a few years ago. I was not even sure where it was located.
Here is a brief history; Malta is comprised of 7 very small islands of which 3 are inhabited. To give you an idea of the size, you could drive across the main island, north to south, in about one hour, and then take a 20 minute ferry ride across to Gozo and drive across that island in 15 minutes. These islands are 58 miles south of Sicily, Italy (the southern tip of the boot), and 180 miles north of North Africa.
The sites from every turn are breathtaking and the weather has been touted as the “best climate in the world,” having just 2 seasons. The average low temperature is 60 degrees, and the average high is 72 degrees.
Beautiful place and great weather!!!
Malta has served as a crucial strategic position in the Mediterranean Sea for hundreds of years. The country was under British rule from 1814 to1964 until it gained its independence. It is now part of the European Union (since 2004) and adopted the EURO in January, 2008.
The Maltese people are mainly bi-lingual, fluent in English and Maltese, a cross between Sicilian and Arabic.
Here is a little food for thought. The United States has a population of 280,000,000 (roughly half of which are women), with approximately 300,000 licensed nail technicians. That is about 1 tech for every 400 women. The population of Malta is 350,000 people. While we don’t know exactly how many nail technicians exist in Malta, since licensing is virtually nonexistent, we estimated that there are 525 technicians. With 91 attendees, our seminar in Malta brought in over 15% of all nail technicians in the country. VERY IMPRESSIVE! If you took this percentage and applied that to a seminar in the United States, it could virtually fill an NFL stadium or rock concert hall!
The thing that impressed me the most were the people. I had the extreme pleasure to work with our distributor in Malta; an eager, energetic, passionate, hard-working, committed, driven and amazing young couple. I have not seen this kind of work ethic or dedication to each other and their goals in a long, long, time. I went there to help them and to teach, and what ended up happening was I became the student and I left feeling rejuvenated and reenergized all because of their spirit. To Stephanie and Nureyev of NSI Malta, customer service is second nature, and there was NOTHING that was a problem.
Thank you Stephanie, Nureyev and Malta for hosting one of my most memorable trips!
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on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under Industry News.
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