Danielle Cohen-Shohet developed a tech platform to assist spa, studio and salon business house owners handle their operations. She had seen firsthand the challenges of working a small enterprise as a contract make-up artist, considered one of her jobs whereas she was a scholar at Princeton.
So she taught herself tips on how to code, launched in 2016, raised $2.8 million in pre-seed funding from Techstars and angel traders, and bootstrapped her firm, GlossGenius, for 5 years earlier than closing a $16.4 million round last November.
GlossGenius has greater than 40,000 prospects within the magnificence and wellness house in the present day and sees about $2 billion in annualized transaction quantity on its platform, CEO and founder Cohen-Shohet informed TechCrunch in an interview. The platform goals to be a vertical software program “business-in-a-box” for magnificence professionals, a aim Cohen-Shohet has previously likened to what Toast did within the restaurant business.
GlossGenius founder and CEO Danielle Cohen-Shohet. Picture Credit: GlossGenius
After seeing “triple-digit” year-over-year share income development since its final fundraise, GlossGenius has raised one other spherical of capital, in response to Cohen-Shohet. The New York-based startup nabbed $25 million in financing led by Imaginary Ventures and Bessemer Enterprise Companions, with participation from Left Lane Capital, which brings its whole funding to $44.2 million since its launch again in 2016.
Cohen-Shohet mentioned this newest spherical marks a 3x markup over the valuation the corporate earned in its November 2021 fundraise, and whereas she didn’t share the precise valuation quantity, she mentioned it’s within the “lots of of hundreds of thousands” of {dollars}.
Over 70% of GlossGenius’s prospects are girls and a good portion are underrepresented minorities, in response to Cohen-Shohet. That is partially a characteristic of the business — possession within the salon and spa house contains “greater than two instances the personal sector common with regards to girls, African American and Asian enterprise house owners,” Cohen-Shohet mentioned.
Serving to small companies run massive operations is core to the corporate’s mission, Cohen-Shohet mentioned.
“Zooming out from a single buyer and this cloth we’re creating, it’s thrilling that we’re, indirectly, an engine for financial mobility, for entrepreneurs from various backgrounds, and an engine for financial mobility for small companies that’s serving to them play on the identical stage taking part in subject as bigger corporations,” Cohen-Shohet mentioned.
In a method, the pandemic turbocharged GlossGenius’s success. The platform automates many features of each the again workplace operations and the consumer expertise for its small enterprise prospects, together with bookkeeping and funds, stock administration, on-line reserving and e-mail advertising.
“Submit-pandemic, one of many issues that turned very obvious is that small enterprise house owners have been extra prepared than ever to embrace the promise of digitization,” Cohen-Shohet mentioned.
Buyer acquisition has largely occurred via word-of-mouth, as GlossGenius doesn’t have any devoted gross sales professionals on its group in the present day, in response to Cohen-Shohet. GlossGenius says that on common, its prospects earn 25-100% extra income because of utilizing its product.
The corporate plans to make use of the brand new funding to develop its worker base of 150 with a concentrate on engineering, product and design in addition to advertising, Cohen-Shohet mentioned. GlossGenius additionally plans to proceed investing in new product improvement, notably for fintech features.
Cohen-Shohet mentioned the corporate has been “on a tear with product innovation” previously few months, noting GlossGenius has launched a “no-show safety stack” to assist house owners scale back the variety of appointment cancellations they’re seeing in addition to a tap-to-pay embedded funds integration with Apple that enables workers to make use of cell telephones as {hardware} to course of transactions.
Finally, Cohen-Shohet’s aim is to construct a holistic, all-encompassing enterprise administration platform for small enterprise house owners within the magnificence and wellness house.
“I believe the urge for food for freedom, flexibility and management amongst enterprise house owners has by no means been greater,” Cohen-Shohet mentioned.
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