Somewhere down the row at Glo Nails & Spa, someone is asleep behind a heated eye mask. There is always someone. Nobody wakes them. They've stopped watching the clock, and nobody's in a hurry to remind them what time it is.
Getting a person into that condition takes fourteen steps. It's called a Japanese Head Spa, and that's four more steps than most mortgage closings.
It's September, the month Minnesota gets its life back in order. Think what you've put yourself through since June. Three months of sun. Lake water. Chlorine. Sweat, ponytails, one increasingly loyal baseball cap, and a humidity index your hair took personally. Nobody thanked you for any of it. There's a room in The Grove built for the reboot.
Glo Nails & Spa is Kim Nguyen's second act. Her first salon, Beauté Contour Nail Lounge, stays so busy that a second location stopped being a gamble and became a matter of time. So she bought an existing salon, gutted it, and rebuilt it—brand new everything—reopening in September 2024. Two Septembers of resets ago.
A first salon proves you can do the work. A second proves you understood why people kept coming back.
Years at the first shop taught Kim what she was really selling.
"People want more than flawless nails," she says. "They want comfort, calm, and a space where they feel genuinely cared for."
The proof is the head spa.
Warm water. An aromatherapy scalp cleanse with seasonal blends. A heated eye mask. By the time the scalp massage starts, you've already lost track of what came first. It keeps going long past where you would have politely thanked anyone else and sat up. The full ninety-minute version is called the Luxe Glo Retreat, and it is not a shampoo. A shampoo cleans your scalp. This takes care of it. And the mind attached to it.
Our editor Annie went first. Kim did the treatment herself.
"It felt better than a facial," Annie reported. "It was a massage for your head and scalp."
You should know that Annie loves facials. Really loves them. So from her, that's not a compliment. That's a conversion. Asked for details, she used the word relaxing three times in four sentences, which tells you where her brain still was.
Tim went too, for the first manicure of his life.
He reported back from a massage pedicure chair: "Out of this world nice. I can see why women get their nails done."
He also noticed the calm here isn't silence. A hum of easy conversation runs underneath everything, much of it Kim, whose way of talking with people makes it feel safe to relax. He's already asked when he can go back—not bad for a guy who walked in expecting to feel a little ridiculous.
The room makes it easy to believe them. A full wall of polish. Warm wood, soft round lights, a plant in every sightline. Pedicure chairs whose tufted backs curve over you like crescent moons. Beside each one, a little gold tray with orange slices.
The nail side holds up its end: gel manicures, structured nails, luxury pedicures, gentle on natural nails. Your hands spent the summer gripping paddles, pulling weeds, and opening sunscreen. Your feet spent it entirely in public. Come Halloween they enter witness protection until spring, so consider September the farewell tour.
"What motivates me most is seeing clients walk out happier, calmer, and more confident," Kim says. Running two salons takes energy, and she protects hers with "quiet moments, warm aromatherapy, and simple routines."
Her own reset is a head spa followed by a fresh gel manicure.
The owner of the spa also requires the spa.
Glo is open seven days, walk-ins welcome. Somewhere out past October there's a winter hat with your name on it. Soon enough, it'll be you in the chair.
Ninety minutes.
Fourteen steps.
Nobody will wake you.
"It felt better than a facial. It was a massage for your head and scalp."
— Annie Doran, editor