loys more than 500 people and generates annual revenue exceeding $100 million. As the family’s salon heritage reaches its 40-year milestone, Nappa and his brother Guy are targeting 50 stores by June 2027. Behind those milestones, however, is a story of uncomfortable decisions and learning on the job. The brothers have had to keep developing their own capabilities while building a business that demands more of them.  From salon shelves to Shopify In 2012, Nappa was studying full-time, working weekends as a waiter and packing six or seven daily orders from a corner of his father’s warehouse. His $10,000 savings helped buy out his father’s friends from an online venture they had struggled to establish. Initially, he sourced products from his parents’ salons, paying for stock as it sold. Eventually, he was clearing their shelves so efficiently that he needed his own supplier accounts.  While the family provided relationships, reputation and an education in customer service, building an e-commerce business required another skill set. A decisive shift came in 2017, when Oz Hair and Beauty moved onto Shopify and invested in attracting customers to its own platform rather than relying on Ebay. “We weren’t really taking money off the table,” Nappa said. Suppliers supported a business that could build their brands, while the brothers strengthened their direct relationship with customers. Oz Hair and Beauty’s revenue doubled that year. Learning retail from the investors Covid doubled the online retailer again, taking revenue to around $40 million. A move into a larger distribution centre before the pandemic provided room to absorb demand. But the next transformation required expertise the brothers didn’t yet possess. “We knew how to run a good online business,” Nappa said. But physical retail was different, and early attempts to adapt his parents’ remaining stores exposed the distance between their e-commerce experience and running shops.  In 2021, the retailer secured investment from Edison Growth Fund, Brett Blundy’s BBRC Private Equity and Daniel Agostinelli. Nappa says the brothers sold 40 per cent in exchange for bringing experienced retailers into their corner. For him, the value of having Blundy and Agostinelli involved extends beyond capital. “When they talk, we listen,” he said. “They’re not just money; they’re the expertise.” Their experience helped the brothers avoid mistakes as they learned how to operate stores.  The investors challenged them to build a business serving shoppers online and offline, advice that proved valuable as pandemic e-commerce demand retreated and digital advertising became more expensive. Today, sales are split roughly evenly between channels according to Nappa. Yet getting there required an unsettling period of investment in people, systems and infrastructure. Oz Hair and Beauty lost money in 2022 and 2023, a reversal for brothers accustomed to running a profitable operation. Chewing whilst walking Knowing why they were losing money didn’t eliminate the anxiety. “What if the stores don’t work?” Nappa remembers thinking. Those doubts accompanied the work required to prepare the business for expansion, before the rollout could demonstrate whether the strategy would succeed. It was a different kind of fear from the early inventory mistake. This time, the brothers had investors and a plan, but they still had to prove that they could execute it. Their working relationship carries its own productive tension. Anthony pushes growth, while Guy, the chief operating officer, prioritises stability. Each has authority over his side of the business, and being brothers allows frank conversations without much sugarcoating. “If your CEO and COO aren’t having those disagreements, then you guys aren’t really pushing to do your job individually as good as possible,” Nappa said. For them, disagreement is part of doing the work.  Growth has also changed Anthony’s role, from doing the work himself to developing leaders who can build their own teams within Oz Hair and Beauty. But professionalising the business doesn’t mean waiting until every decision feels safe. When asked which company value resonated most, he chose “chewing whilst walking”, progressing while working things out. “We’re not going to wait for a perfect decision to grow,” he said. It is a fitting description of how the retailer reached this point.