StyleSeat, the wildly successful US-based beauty services platform that promises an effortless experience for hair and beauty appointments has had an explosive year.
The consumer experience is ripe for disruption in the $21B industry where the traditional client approach to finding a good stylist or esthetician often includes an online search, chasing personal recommendations and trying salons out by trial and error. StyleSeat continues to grow at a rate of 100% per year. Since 2011, the company has booked $2 billion in appointments. Moreover, its growth is based almost entirely on word-of-mouth marketing.
StyleSeat's business model aims for transparency and ease-of-use. Beauty professionals using the platform present their service and price list in their profile along with photos of their work and customer ratings, while in the back-end StyleSeat manages the entire scheduling and payment process for both customer and stylist. Clients book services using the app or website and are automatically charged upon completion of the appointment, eliminating the need for either party to settle the bill at the end.
"An unmatched level of convenience has customers returning to StyleSeat more regularly over time." says Melody McCloskey, CEO and Co-founder of StyleSeat.
"When I started StyleSeat, my vision was to solve problems for customers, but we've also found that the user platform brought a massive opportunity to improve the stylist business as well. In 2011, only 20% of America's stylists were independent workers because it was just too difficult to establish and manage your own business back then. But with StyleSeat, we take care of the back-end operations and marketing, so professionals can focus on services, while they rapidly grow their own operations. The average stylist grows their business by 70% by using StyleSeat." she adds.
StyleSeat is currently the US leader in this space with 30% of all American stylists on the platform. The company celebrates another banner year after acquiring New York's BeautyBooked and carving out more market share upon the exit of Lifebooker.
"Our first step was focussed on reach with stylists. We built the platform to optimize their experience and their expectations for their clients. A lot of on-demand apps tend to commoditize the beauty professional and their service list."
The company has placed emphasis on the personal nature of the beauty service experience and focusses on enabling stylists to showcase their aesthetic, their portfolio and their unique profile in the market. A well-built stylist profile integrated with Instagram further builds transparency and trust into their platform and acts as a natural marketing strategy.
From a stylist perspective, the success story is common. Anita Chan, owner of Anita B Beauty in San Francisco grew her business from 50 to 700 clients as an early adopter at StyleSeat.
"Rapid growth in my client list using Styleseat helped me leave my day job and take the leap to being a full-time independent stylist." Anita says, mentioning that she's now running her own salon and expanding into a larger spa space.
Several socio-economic factors are at play in the US beauty market. In the last five years, the percentage of independent beauty professionals has grown by from 20% to 70% (US Census). Freelance and independent work in the employment market continues to expand with new businesses solutions available to support these users. Salons offering stylists the ability to 'rent a chair' is eliminating the common real estate problem for go-it-alone stylists. Sola Salons provides stylists the ability to rent a private salon space for a few hundred dollars a month. By contrast, a career in a traditional beauty salon typically required stylists to forgo 50% of their revenues to cover rent and operating expenses and mandated the use a specific brand of professional products.
"We're conquering a very fragmented market and expectations are extremely high. So this year we're improving the search experience and design of the site. StyleSeat's platform is 3X better than at the beginning of the year."
New York's high-end Cutler Salon is also embracing StyleSeat as a way to innovate and grow, while keeping both customers and top stylist talent happy. Jen Atkin (celebrity stylist to Khloe Kardashian, Jessica Alba, Katy Perry and Sofia Vergara) was also an early adopter of StyleSeat.
"Stylists can generate massive influence on social media and Instagram, which further support their growth. Happy clients and stylists help grow StyleSeat based on word-of-mouth and that is incredible."
Looking ahead, attracting more men presents a mammoth opportunity in the high-growth market.
"Barbershops love us! When I started this business, no one believed that a barbershop would embrace a business service like StyleSeat. But barbers are our fastest growing segment. Right now, 75% of our users are female and only 25% are male but that's all changing too."
StyleSeat has an office in New York City and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
