About The Penelle

It started with a nail brush I was tired of fighting with.

My name is Eleanor Bennett, but everyone calls me Elle. I’ve worked as a nail technician for more than 10 years at a small nail salon in Houston, Texas, and during that time I’ve met so many women sitting across from me at the nail table. Some came in every two weeks like clockwork. Some disappeared for months and came back almost apologizing, as if they had done something wrong. But the reason was usually simple: work got busy, the kids needed something, there was always something to do at home, or sometimes the salon was just too far away to justify spending two or three hours driving there, getting their nails done, and driving back home.

And honestly, I understood.

I love doing nails, but I also know that going to a nail salon is not always as relaxing as it looks on Instagram. Sometimes it is just one more appointment you have to squeeze into a week that is already full.

Years ago, I tried to solve that problem in my own small way. I opened a tiny online shop selling traditional bottles of nail polish. It was nothing huge. I simply thought it would be nice if women could have beautiful nails at home without always having to make a salon appointment.

At first, the business actually did pretty well. My regular clients supported me, they told their friends, and new customers started finding my little shop through recommendations. For a while, I thought:

Maybe I really figured this out.

But then orders started slowing down. Then they slowed down even more, and a little over a year later I was discounting the remaining stock just to clear it out. Eventually, I closed the shop.

It hurt more than I expected.

For a long time, I told myself that maybe I just wasn’t meant to run a business.

Then one afternoon, I went for coffee with a client who had been coming to me since the early years of my career. Somehow, the conversation came back to that old nail polish business. She told me she had actually loved the colors I used to sell, then laughed and said:

“Elle, the colors were beautiful. But you expected me to paint my other hand with that little bottle brush? Absolutely not.”

Fair enough.

She also reminded me how impatient she was waiting for regular polish to dry. You wait forever, you think it is finally dry, then five minutes later you bump your hand into something and ruin one nail. And of course, she had to add that modern gel polish looked much shinier anyway.

I laughed, but when I went home, I kept thinking about what she had said.

Maybe the problem wasn’t that my product was bad. Maybe the problem was that I had accidentally expected my customers to become nail technicians just to use it. Holding a traditional polish bottle and brush felt completely normal to me because I had done it thousands of times. But for someone sitting at the kitchen table trying to paint their dominant hand, it could feel awkward, messy, and frustrating.

After COVID, I noticed something else. A lot of my clients had become more comfortable doing things for themselves at home. Some stopped coming to the salon as often. Some learned basic nail care. Some simply wanted to save time and money. I started thinking about nail products again, but this time I knew one thing for sure:

I did not want to start over with the same old bottle.

For months, I kept asking myself: How do you make gel nails easier for someone who is not a nail technician?

Then one day, the answer came from the least professional product developer I had ever met:

My niece.

She had always been fascinated by the colors and designs on my nails. One afternoon, I caught her using one of her acrylic paint pens to draw on her fingernails.

My first reaction was:

“Wait. Please do not put that on your nails!”

My second reaction was:

Wait… a pen?

I started laughing because suddenly the idea felt so obvious.

Why couldn’t nail color work more like something everyone already knows how to hold? Why did gel polish have to come in a bottle? Why couldn’t it come in a slim pen that felt easier to grip and easier to control?

I grabbed a piece of paper and started sketching: a slim body, a brush tip, gel inside, something that could feel comfortable in either hand. And for cat-eye gel, I wanted the magnet built directly into the cap.

That sketch became the beginning of The Penelle.

What followed were months of searching, sampling, changing details, talking with manufacturers, and rejecting anything that still felt too bulky or complicated. The goal was never to replace nail salons. I have spent more than 10 years working in this industry. I love the craft, and I know the value of professional nail artists.

What I wanted was much simpler:

I wanted women to have another option.

An option for the woman who gets home too late to make a nail appointment, for the mom who finally has 30 quiet minutes after everyone goes to bed, for the person who lives too far from their favorite salon, for the beginner who loves beautiful nails but feels intimidated by traditional gel bottles, or simply for someone who wants to sit at her own table, put on a playlist, and do something small for herself.

I also carried one big lesson with me from my first business: inventory. The first time around, I bought too much because I thought having more stock meant I was building a bigger business. When sales slowed down, those boxes became a very expensive lesson. A small brand cannot always afford to guess what the market will do.

So this time, I decided to build The Penelle differently. We are starting with small, controlled production based closely on preorder demand. That allows us to manage inventory more carefully, pay closer attention to quality, and grow at a pace a small brand can actually support.

It may not be the fastest way to build a beauty brand. But after what I learned the first time, I would rather build something slowly and carefully than fill a warehouse with products just to look bigger than we are.

And that is where The Penelle is today.

A second beginning. A better idea. And hopefully, an easier way to do your nails at home.

If you are one of the first people trusting us with an order, thank you. Truly.

Small brands do not begin with thousands of customers. They begin with a few people willing to believe in an idea before everyone else knows about it.

The mission of The Penelle is simple: to make doing your own nails feel less intimidating, less complicated, and a little more enjoyable.

Beautiful nails do not always need an appointment.

Sometimes, all you need is a little time, a good lamp, and a pen.

With love,
Elle Bennett
Founder of The Penelle