Book Salon, a Finnish payment and booking service provider specialising in hair, beauty, and wellness companies, has closed a EUR1 million funding round led by Big Bets VC.
Sontek Ventures and well-known business angel Lennu Keinänen also participated in the round. The funding will be used to further expand its operations, and prepare for further growth in Europe as the company looks to expand its offering.
“We are excited to have the backing of Big Bets VC who can help us accelerate the development of our operational capabilities and scale in new geographies,” says Book Salon CEO Harri Myllylä.
“Big Bets and their ambition level is a perfect match for Book Salon. Together, we aim to disrupt the current Payment Service Provider market, and the hair, beauty, and wellness sector is our first target. We believe that PSPs need to go beyond providing payment processing services. That’s why at Book Salon we also provide access to industry-specific value-adding services and tools that help the entrepreneurs save time, effort, and money,” he says.
Developed closely with hair and beauty professionals, Book Salon provides entrepreneurs with a full suite of modern tools to run a successful business. Book Salon offers payment terminals and a payment processing service, in addition to its website builder, online booking systems, and cash and accounting reports.
Currently, beauty salons are forced to use different service providers to manage their salons – or in the worst case, because it is a lot to handle, they decide not to have them in the first place. According to Book Salon, 65 per cent of salons in the EU have no booking system or any other digital tools.
This means a loss in income, potential difficulties in splitting the income correctly between different salon workers, and more time spent on doing admin work, not the actual client work.
“The beauty and wellness industry employs innovative and entrepreneurial people who deserve the best possible digital tools. We believe that entrepreneurs pay far too much for simple digital tools, many of which don’t play well together and entrepreneurs have to waste time reconciling reports and jumping from one service to another,” says Jonne Castrén, Founder and COO at Book Salon.
Unlike its competitors such as Booksy or Treatwell that require entrepreneurs to pay per user, Book Salon offers its software to salons and entrepreneurs for free.
“I believe that repeat entrepreneurs make the best foundation for a startup. It is very exciting to see a massive inefficiency being fixed with an elegant, smart solution. This market space will see tremendous growth in coming years, and Book Salon will shake the current salon software providers worldwide but more importantly, they will set the future standard for payment processors. Current leaders in payment processing need to note this team – these guys are crazy enough to make it happen,” says Anton Gauffin, Big Bets VC and CEO of Huuuge Games.
“I love the fact that the appointments, checkout system, and payment terminal are all seamlessly integrated. Everything works together so well without unnecessary clicks and steps. I save hours every week as I don’t have to reconcile reports from different systems trying to match them,” says Minttu Kjelin, MyMou/Hair&Beauty-Mybrows.
Founded in 2016 in Helsinki, Finland, Book Salon has raised EUR2M in total funding to date. The company has over 800 salons in its client portfolio.
