Jenni Gilbert How much is your business losing every day, week, year thanks to empty appointments, cancellations or no shows, all the while paying therapists, stylists and admin staff?
Lauren Silvers, co-founder of Australian on-demand beauty app Glamazon, says salons, spas and clinics lose an average of 36,000 appointments a week in total and almost $6000 in revenue for individual salons because of “dead space”.
She says there is a growing trend of consumers looking for a massage, manicure, hairdo or spray tan et al no longer booking in advance but doing so and paying for all of these services on demand using smartphone apps, Uber-style.
Their app uses peer-to-peer technology to allow users to book a therapists or stylist to their home or office or book an appointment with a salon.
That this is a crisis wedded with mammoth opportunity in Australia’s $5 billion beauty industry was never more amply demonstrated than with Lauren and Glamazon co-founder Lisa Maree (Lisa Marie Boersma)’s recent appearance on Network Ten’s Shark Tank, after which the app fairly crashed (briefly!) due to overwhelming demand.
Friends and business partners Lauren and Lisa Maree had already created an Uber-style app for freelance stylists so they could accept local incoming jobs in an instant, in a way an Uber driver would from passengers.
“But what we realised was, with the salon side, we couldn’t access their real-time appointments,” Lauren says.
So they negotiated a strategic partnership with cloud-based business management software firm MINDBODY to tackle Australia’s $5 billion beauty industry, a deal it says could give the industry an ability to generate an additional $2.3 million in revenue a week due to a simple API* integration.
The integration has connected Glamazon with 500 beauty salons around the country – about 4% of the market – with a second integration of some 300 salons on the way.
‘There is a cultural shift here, where customers in general are becoming really used to peer-to-peer services,” Lauren says.
“They now prefer UberX, a stranger’s car, to ordering a taxi. This is just the way the world is moving.
“This API integration is the only way to get instant real-time data and avoid double-ups.
“Salon diary systems change every five to 10 minutes, whether that’s someone calling to cancel, add another service or see if their mum could come with them.
“It’s just not possible to keep up with that without access to real-time data.”
Adds Lisa Maree, a swimwear label owner: “People are becoming more accepting of having someone come to their house, like Airbnb, or step into a stranger’s car, like Uber – it’s becoming a preferred method of booking for convenience purposes.”
Bridal parties are popular users of the app, often booking freelance stylists to provide services including hairdressing, makeup, massages, manicures, facials, nails and tanning.
“On-demand beauty really encompasses being able to get beauty delivered like a pizza, it is that instant connection with a beauty salon or a freelance stylist,” Lauren says.
The app already has over 10,000 users and is partnered with more than 300 freelance stylists and well-established beauty salons around Australia.
With a similar interface to Uber, users can see which beauty businesses have free appointments within a 10km radius. Freelance stylists and therapists are booked in a similar way.
The app is free to download. Users pay for appointments via credit card, with Glamazon taking a 15-25% commission.
“Our business model is turning a zero dollar appointment into 75-85% of what the salon or stylist would already make,” Lauren says.
“What we have seen to date is 75% month-on-month transactional growth, and that is basically with organic marketing,” Lisa says.
The Glamazons’ Shark Tank presentation left every judge speechless.
“Are you robots? You’ve done nothing wrong!” entrepreneur Steve Baxter joked. “That’s the most perfect presentation I’ve ever heard.”
He was all in, securing a 25% stake in the app for $250,000.
* APIs are application program interfaces, tools that make it possible to manage software applications. While invisible to end users, APIs are essential for communication between programs.
