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You are on a business trip abroad, a unorganized do not want to go to a meeting? You do not know the city and have no idea how to get a good hairdresser or beauty salon, and you can only find nearby salons with working hours online, and nothing about the quality of their services and attitude towards customers? In this case, you take a risk and choose a salon more by feeling and hoping for the best.

In such embarrassment, he was also a good two years ago

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Amel Bender when he was on a business trip to Berlin. This inflamed him to turn the Glossiq platform, which was then dedicated to the fashion industry, into a platform that brings together everyone in the beauty industry – from hairdressers and beauty salons to massages and gyms. It quickly turned out that their pivot was the right decision. ) More than just reservations

Solkan startup Glossiq is with Bender at the end of the year 2020 founded Iztok Pavlin . “Business and back-office systems in the beauty industry are outdated. The modern user and the industry itself need much more than just the opportunity to find a salon near you and order by phone or e-mail, “says Iztok Pavlin, CEO of Glossiq, who previously worked for the company SAOP from Šempeter pri Gorici, and later also in the Slovenian unicorn Outfit7 .

In addition to booking salons, the platform also enables the setting up of an online store and thus quick and easy sale of their products and services. In collaboration with editors and writers in beauty magazines, they publish current trendy content, while enabling better connections between service providers and end users, where everyone can share their ideas, trends, videos and thus create their own content. In addition, it allows freelancers from industry to easily enter salons and provide services, and salons a form of finding employees.

Young Primorska entrepreneurs did not think of this, but in Slovenia, the USA and Italy. and in Croatia, where the Glossiq will officially open in mid-May, connect with experts and influencers. In Italy alone, for example, there are 35,000 beauty salons and 66,000 hairdressing salons.

Who helps them

There is a lot of advice for them on home soil gave and still supports them Mitja Sawyer – Mitch, have support in the US John Paul Dejorio , co-founder of branded hair care products Paul Mitchell , and renowned hairdresser Alee Caa , who is in Glossiq first invested 50 thousandths of seed capital. “It is even more important that Caa helps us enter the big American market,” said Iztok Pavlin.

Glossiq has officially opened in Italy, where they are among their supporters Carlo Bay , which has more than 90 hair salons in Italy, Switzerland, France and Russia, Sergio Valente , who works with renowned stylists at houses such as Valentino, Fendi, Versace

. Upon entering the Croatian market, they connected with Denis Vidovič , hairdresser and owner of a professional magazine for hairdressers.

Advantage over competition

There is already quite a bit of competition in this industry, such as Uala, Treatwell, Fresha, but it only solves the challenges faced by salons and users by booking and subscribing to services. “However, we have not yet found a platform on the market that would cover a wider range and thus solve several challenges in the beauty industry. Glossiq achieved this. However, since the competition is not asleep, we are preparing additional tools that will provide the user with services and products according to skin type, hair and eye color, “says Pavlin. For this, they will benefit from the investment of business angels, with which they will be able to focus more on marketing.

Calculation for salons

Team is launched and in just the last seven months they managed to connect 150 hair salons in Slovenia and 4,300 in Italy. In the second half of the year, the platform will also be launched in Serbia. They also want to enter the Middle East and North Africa market, so in March, together with other startups of the Primorska Technology Park, they traveled to Dubai to the Flat6lab accelerator.

The team is convinced that Glossiq can raise the salon by a third revenues, and reduces costs by about a third due to business optimization. The website, which enables two-way communication between the salon and users, also provides significantly better recognition of the salon and individual hairdressers. The salon, which earned € 13,600 a month, earns € 17,400 using Glossiq, showed a calculation made on the basis of the director’s experience with four hair salons and 12 employees.

Business Model

Last year, Glossiq generated 54 thousand euros in revenues, this year they are expected to exceed 400 thousand euros. They use an application that is otherwise free, but the user is shown the ads with which Glossiq generates the most revenue.

If the salon opts for a premium package with a monthly flat rate of at least five euros , avoids ads, and thus improves the user experience for its customers. Glossiq also earns by charging five percent of the value of the order and 25 cents on each transaction when selling products through the platform.