Zoya
Nail lacquer formulated and filled at a company-owned plant in Bedford, Ohio
🇺🇸 American Manufacturing
Our assessment
Company details
Where Zoya products are made
Art of Beauty brought all manufacturing in-house in 2000 and in 2014 acquired the Bedford, Ohio headquarters it still occupies, on environmentally reclaimed land, describing the move as switching to fully self-sustained manufacturing.
Bedford houses internal laboratories and a full R&D centre alongside the filling line. In nail chemistry, where reformulating away from a solvent is the whole competitive story, having the chemists and the fillers in one building is the point.
Zoya stripped toluene, camphor, formaldehyde, formaldehyde resin and DBP out of its formulas and launched a “Big 10 Free” standard in 2007. Every one of those removals is a production change, not a marketing change.
The Bedford, Ohio address, the 1986 founding date and the in-house manufacturing history are all published by Art of Beauty on its own sites. Note one honest limitation: Zoya’s individual product pages carry no printed “Made in USA” line. The origin support here is corporate — a company-owned Ohio plant doing its own filling — which is why the emblem reads American Manufacturing rather than Made in USA.
The story
Zoya and Michael Reyzis left the Soviet Union in 1979 as refugees. She was a classically trained pianist who took a cosmetology licence; he was an advanced chemist. In 1986 they founded Art of Beauty in Ohio, and named the polish after her.
The chemistry background showed up early. Zoom Dry, a fast-drying top coat, arrived in 1986; a patented polish-drying drop, QTICA Half-Time, followed in 1994. These were process products — solutions to the part of a manicure everybody hates.
In 2000 the company moved to an expanded facility and pulled all manufacturing in-house. In 2014 it bought the Bedford headquarters it occupies now, on reclaimed land, with its own laboratories and R&D centre.
Along the way Zoya became one of the first polish brands to strip its formulas back — toluene, camphor, formaldehyde and DBP out — and codified it as a “Big 10 Free” standard in 2007. The catalogue now runs past 850 colours.
Why they matter
Cosmetics is a category built on contract manufacturing. A brand can be a logo, a website and a purchase order to somebody else’s filling line. Owning the plant, as Art of Beauty does, is the exception rather than the rule.
It also explains why the reformulation happened at all. Removing five solvents from a lacquer means reworking the product repeatedly and eating the failures, which is far easier when the lab and the line belong to you.
And forty years of continuous founder ownership is its own kind of evidence. Nothing about Zoya’s Ohio footprint is the result of a marketing decision made last year.
Shop Zoya products
Browse Zoya nail polish and nail care stocked on the Buy American Campaign store.
Frequently asked questions
Where is Zoya nail polish made?
At Art of Beauty’s company-owned manufacturing and filling facility in Bedford, Ohio, which also houses the company’s laboratories and R&D centre. Note that Zoya product pages do not print a “Made in USA” line; the evidence is the company-owned Ohio plant.
Who makes Zoya?
Art of Beauty, Inc., founded in 1986 by Zoya and Michael Reyzis. Zoya is its flagship brand, alongside Qtica, Smart Spa, Zoom, Naked Manicure, Gelie-Cure and Oylie.
What does “Big 10 Free” mean?
A formulation standard Zoya launched in 2007. The company was among the first to remove toluene, camphor, formaldehyde, formaldehyde resin and DBP from its polishes.
Is Zoya vegan and cruelty-free?
Zoya describes its polish as vegan-friendly, cruelty-free and TPO-free.