well, this thread has had me up & down like a yo-yo emotion wise LOL. I too bought my Bio starter kit at the NEC so have followed the comments in here closely.
I chose to get Bio based on the fact that I wore it for 3 years back when I was a barmaid in a sleeping little village pub, I did not want to look like the stereotypical sleepy village wife so I had the most enormous & loud nails I could. I did start out with tips & overlay but eventually grew them out to just overlays, they were strong & stood up to all the beatings they took, even changing barrels. I only ever broke 2, one I accidentally hit with a hammer while building a radiator cover & one I snapped off when a suitcase shot out of my hand & took my nail tip with it, so can't blame the product for either of them. I never found that mine yellowed but I did follow my aftercare instuctions and always wore the clear coat as a base before I used nail polish.
The comment in here that a good apex/C curve cannot be built with Bio did worry me, so being as my kit was sat there (my training isn't for another 10 days yet) I just had to have a fiddle. Using my number 1 guinea pig (my partner Paul, bless him) I had a go. Now, he has nice nails with a good size nail bed, the problem is the shape, they look like a nice curve with the top pushed down if u can imagine it, the middle section of each nail plate is flat then it curves away nicely to the side walls (sort of like the shape of the big sleeping policeman speed bumps ). The outcome wasn't brilliant being a first attempt but with the video & training booklet to hand, I did manage to build a curve & apex, it wouldn't have won any prizes but it did look more or less the correct shape.
I don't dispute that it is an expensive system compared to some but there are people out there who want Bio on thier nails .......... I was one of them. I knew the cost implications long before I bought the kit but I was still drawn to it from my own experience of it.
A friend of mine who has been through training with me commented that in her area people can go to someones house & get acrylics done for £10-£15 so how could she compete with that if she did Bio, my answer was that I'm mobile I won't be working in areas where people look for "cheap" nails, I'll promote myself to people in areas who can afford the level of service I'm going to give. There is a market for it it just has to be found.
Karen