No Time To Visit The Hairdresser? Meet The Beauty Uber From Bulgaria
Finding time for beauty procedures, manicures, haircuts, massage could be a challenge in the dynamic city lifestyle – call to schedule it, travel to the studio, and then back – and the whole afternoon is gone. Entrepreneur Gabriela Rogers has come up with a solution for this. GoBeauty is a mobile application that puts in direct contact customers and freelancers beauty specialists, allows them to schedule home and office visits, and pay online.
“It’s something like an Uber for Beauty,” says the founder, who is also a Founder Institute graduate and entrepreneur in the cosmetics sector with 10 years of experience, and two companies on the track record. GoBeauty was started last year – first with a B2B model, targeting corporate clients, and the end-consumer service has launched at the beginning of the summer. So far the app has been downloaded 5k times and has 900 registrations, tells us Rogers.
The Beauty Uber
The model is indeed quite similar to the Uber one. It currently connects over 50 professionals with clients who can order a service, schedule a visit, and pay afterwards via the application. To assure the quality of the services the freelancers need to have at least two years of experience in the respective field and go through tests and training before they start to work via the platform.
Hairdress, manicures, pedicures, and massages are on the current service portfolio of GoBeauty. The prices are standardized, all the payments happen through the app, and GoBeauty receives a 30% revenue cut. The rest 70% goes to beauty professionals.
GoBeauty was started a year ago when Rogers started offering “Corporate Wellness” – monthly visits to the offices of corporate clients, where more employees can use massage and manicure services. The b2b model has nothing to do with the application, and is already profitable as it doesn’t require investments in materials or spaces. Currently, the company has four corporate clients who receive massage and manicure and its goal is to more than double them by the end of the year. The app for end-customers was launched at the end of June this year.
To allow end-customers to purchase beauty products via the app is also on the roadmap for the next year. “This might even turn out to be a more profitable business, since it opens up a whole new sales channels for cosmetics products,” says the founder.
As of now, the competition consists of traditional beauty salons, and companies offering office massages. The USP of GoBeauty, however, is the broader portfolio and the convenience, tells us Rogers. The company is completely bootstrapped.
Already popular model
Uber for something appears on the slides of every third pitch deck nowadays. Indeed UberBeauty is an existing service, that was launched in Hamptons in 2014 and offers beauty procedures during the ride. There are also prominent and well-developing models just like GoBeauty. In the US Paris Hilton even invested in one called The Glam App. In Europe, there are also players like the UK company Prettly.
“We aim to grow our user base in Bulgaria, and eventually offer the same model in the surrounding markets,” tells us Rogers. Currently, GoBeauty is available only in Sofia, but could soon be expanded to other cities as well.
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