Wah Nails founder Sharmadean Reid grabs $1m from Saul Klein’s Localglobe for new beauty networking app Beautystack
The founder of London salon chain Wah Nails has proved she means business with her latest beauty venture, grabbing almost $1m of funding from Saul Klein’s Localglobe and angel investors.
Wah’s Sharmadean Reid plans to use the funding to develop and launch the app of Beautystack, a new platform which acts as a beauty appointment booking engine and networking tool.
The investment is the first in the beauty space from Localglobe, an early backer of Citymapper and Transferwise established by Seedcamp founder and serial venture capitalist Saul Klein.
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Angel contributors included ex-Net-A-Porter boss Mark Sebba, former Wired editor David Rowan and the head of Facebook’s Workplace business Julien Codorniou.
“Beauty is one of the biggest industries on the internet but the existing community platforms are missing a huge part of the industry in terms of service,” said Reid.
“There is a new market of millennial beauty professionals who use social media to build their client base and solicit enquiries via direct messaging. By using Beautystack, these professionals will be able to close the loop on bookings from content.”
A select invite-only group of beauty professionals will be invited to use Beautystack. Customers who see social media image posts of those professionals’ finished treatments will be able to directly book appointments through that post.
“This is the age of the selfie,” Reid explained. “People are posting millions of them every day, whether on Instagram or other networks, and it’s this user-generated content and recommendations from friends that people look to when booking beauty services, not a listings page.”
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Another part of the idea behind Beautystack was to “empower” women through a career in beauty.
“Many people may be doing beauty treatments as a side hustle and not realise that they can create their own business and earn a good living,” Reid added. “Girls should know that this [performing beauty treatments] could pay their way through university.”
The group of professionals who join Beautystack initially will pay a small booking fee with each treatment, and there will be a monthly subscription for those who want web hosting services for a blog or site, customisation and partner integrations.
The platform will eventually aim to earn money from partnerships with brands.
Central St Martins-trained Reid has already worked with household names such as Selfridges and Topshop – where she had Wah Nails boutiques – and Nike, Asos and Walmart Alliance Boots.
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