It was 3 am, but Nguyen Ngoc Truc, 23, in District 6, HCM City was still working at a nail parlour, meticulously applying makeup to a Baby Three doll.

Nguyen Ngoc Chi, the owner of the nail parlour where Truc works, said the service of beautifying Baby Three dolls is in high demand as the dolls are collected by youth.

Baby Three is a stuffed animal toy launched in May with 'blind boxes'. Once they were available on the market, they quickly captivated young collectors. However, when opening the boxes, buyers often found dolls that did not match their expectations.

The dolls were neither beautiful nor special. Most had problems, including squint eyes. Buyers had to continue to buy the dolls and open boxes to find more attractive dolls.

However, many people could not find such dolls and in order to save money, they had the ugly dolls beautified. This led to a service of beautifying Baby Three dolls.

Currently, there are two services for Baby Three dolls - replacing and upgrading the dolls’ eyes and makeup. For dolls with squint eyes, owners mostly just want to replace the eyes for VND20,000-250,000 for each.

Makeup is a more complicated service which can only be done by workers with good makeup skills, or professional nail technicians.

“Nail technicians can apply makeup, paint the face, eyes, forehead, or even change the doll’s hair color and outfit, depending on customers’ requirements. We also paint characters and images on the dolls as requested,” Chi explained. 

“The most important thing is making the dolls more beautiful and soulful after the makeover. This requires highly skilled, experienced nail technicians,” she said.

With the growing number of Baby Three collectors, the demand for modifying these dolls is increasing. Most makeup artists and nail technicians are taking part in this seasonal work.

Chi revealed that the work requires meticulousness, and she and her workers do 3-4 dolls each day which brings income of VND500,000-1 million.

Ngan, 25, a nail technician with six years of experience in district 1, HCM City, considers it a high-income job.

“The service is seasonal, but it can bring good income, because the manufacturer continuously launches new products,” she said.

Thao Trinh