The Lady With Blue Nails. Matching Headings

You are going to read an extract from an article about a businesswoman. Choose from the list A-l the sentence which best summarizes each part (1-7) of the extract. There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use. There is an example at the beginning (0).

A. An up-market product

B. Attracted to her latest interests

C. Facing up to competition

D. Building a range of colours

E. Initial involvement pays off

F. Personal taste influences a decision

G. Building on previous success

H. The thinking behind a decision

I. An unusual combination of interests

Sandy Lerner is founder of an unusual range of nail-polish colours.

0. I

The links between computers and cosmetics are not obvious, but one of the most successful self-made businesswomen in the USA, Sandy Lemer, has made her fortune in both.

1. _____

With her long purple hair and taste for blue nail polish, it is not surprising that Sandy got fed up with not being able to find make-up she liked. After a brief spell of mixing her own colours, Sandy decided to set up her own company.

2. _____

Since its launch in 1996, her company has taken the USA, Asia and Europe by storm. At the time everyone was still heavily into pinks and reds.' says Sandy ‘and I thought that given other developments going on in the fashion world, the time was ripe for an alternative.'

3. _____

It’s one thing to like blue nail polish yourself, but quite another to set up a company making it. however The more money you have, the easier that decision is to make,’ she admits. And she has plenty. Sandy made her fortune in a former career as a computer specialist. She set up a company in 1984 after designing a piece of technology which is now used in 80% of connections on the Internet.

4. _____

The new company is proving to be a nice little earner too. As founder and chief executive of the company,

Sandy was personally responsible for designing the eye-catching advertising campaigns that helped at the beginning, although she now tends to leave the day-to-day business to her partners.

5. _____

But establishing the business was not easy, particularly when the large cosmetics companies realised there was a market for alternative colours and started selling them too. ’As an alternative, we’re never going to threaten the main market of the big companies,’ says Sandy, 'and although they now do similar colours, they only do a few of them. So people who want intense and complicated colours will still come to us.’

6. _____

Although shades of blue, purple, yellow and green sound like just the thing for teenage girls and punks, the company actually aims its products at career women in their thirties and forties. Sandy thinks make-up is about a state of mind, ‘it’s for self-confident people who are not afraid of something you can wash off.' Indeed, the unusual colours and successful marketing campaigns, make the company’s products a hit amongst Hollywood celebrities.

7. _____

Although she keeps a close eye on the company, Sandy admits that she quickly loses interest once a project is up and running. She is now turning her attention to her current projects; a large country house in England, her farm in Virginia where she keeps horses and a new project for promoting nineteenth-century literature on the Internet