HelloBeauty offers one-stop beauty services platform

• Will launch a mobile app in July 2018
• Services are available in 31 cities across Indonesia

INDONESIA-based beauty services marketplace HelloBeauty offers a platform for beauty professionals such as makeup artists (MUA) to connect with clients and allows clients to book beauty artists online.

HelloBeauty founder and chief executive officer Dennish Tjandra tells Digital News Asia that in 2016, his wife had problems finding and booking beauty services. She had to ask artists individually about pricing and availability.

“I was working at one of Rocket Internet's ventures back then and realised that my wife's problem was an untapped space. Then one question came up in my head, if people can find and buy almost anything online, why not beauty services?

“I talked with more women about this issue to understand the problem and the market. After that, I decided to create HelloBeauty.id as a solution and launched the MVP in June 2016. We not only help customers, we built a two-sided beauty marketplace in order to help beauty artists manage and grow their business.”

He explains that HelloBeauty is mainly focused on beauty services. Beauty professionals used to want to work in beauty salons and this profession was often underestimated.

“But now, beauty professionals want to build their own career as freelancers. The interesting thing is that, it has become one of the hottest professions for women. There are a lot of women who work part-time as beauty artists or who gave up other jobs for this one.”

Customers also prefer to have beauty appointments at home as beauty artists are ready to come anywhere at any time.

“Nowadays, women not only book beauty artists for important occasions, such as weddings. They also book beauty artists on a daily basis, just for lunch, dinner, or a party. This is all due to social media trends as people want to look their best all the time.”

HelloBeauty also offers services involving hairstyling, manicures, embroidery and eyelash extensions. Their prices range from 300,000 rupiah (US$21.30) to 18 mil rupiah (US$1,278) depending on the services.

HelloBeauty targets beauty artists (MUA, hairstylists, brow and lash artists) and female clients between 15 to 40 with middle- and upper middle-class incomes. The services are available in 31 cities across Indonesia.

Beauty artists can sign up through a web-based platform, join the community, and subscribe to a premium account to start business. They can also link their social media accounts to their profile.

Clients can find various beauty services based on criteria, budget, and occasion.

HelloBeauty will launch its mobile app in July 2018.

The startup has more than 3,000 beauty artists listed on its platform, with over 10,000 beauty services, 15,000 monthly users, and 500 monthly transactions.

Pivoting its revenue model

HelloBeauty used to generate revenue from transactions and commissions, but after some research, decided to pivot to a subscription model, with premium memberships for the beauty artists beginning in January 2018.

Dennish says that since January 2018, HelloBeauty’s average monthly growth is around 34%, driven by investments in digital ads and through building strong communities.

“We grew very organically in our first 1.5 years while finding the right model and formula. We grew more than 100% in April 2018 because of new features and through investing some money on digital advertising, as well as by strengthening the communities that we built.”

HelloBeauty closed its seed funding round led by Nest Corp (nestcorp.co) in March 2018 after bootstrapping for 1.5 years.

“Now we are focusing on the mobile app as well as on nurturing our team and developing our product-market fit.”

Finding the right business model

Finding the right business model is the main challenge for Dennish who says that, “All beauty services platforms in the worlds are still struggling to find the right business model. After we pivoted, we believe that our current business model is the right one for the industry.”

He adds that his company is not only building a bridge to connect beauty talent and clients, but “HelloBeauty has a vision to create a better ecosystem for the beauty services industry. We provide a support system for beauty talent to manage and grow their business and we facilitate access to collaborations with key partners, brands, and other opportunities to grow.”

He says that HelloBeauty’s next target is to reach 10,000 listed beauty artists by the end of this year and help them get into the support system to grow their beauty businesses.

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