The men behind booking apps for beauty and wellness

SINGAPORE — Who says the men do not get it?

Two grown men with no knowledge of the beauty industry entered it and developed a beauty service booking app. Now, they have close to an 80 per cent share of the local market for beauty service booking apps — a remarkable achievement despite only a few years of knowledge about the beauty industry.

Two other men decided to create a booking service platform for the spa and wellness industry because of the growth potential and the lack of a proper curator to service the needs of a growing urban society increasingly looking to pamper itself with beauty services.

Thanks to these professional IT experts, the introduction of these beauty apps has helped the once-sporadic beauty, spa and wellness industry curate to a fine finish.

These one-stop beauty directories have helped customers reduce the time required to book an appointment, and also eased the hassles in booking beauty trips.

Mr Douglas Gan, 32 and Mr Choy Peng Kong, 31, founders of Vanitee, have a knack for improving any industry they have laid their hands on with their tech expertise, and proof is their track record.

This is not the first business the duo ran. They had previously built a startup called ShowNearby to find places in the vicinity. The business ran a successful start-up life as it was subsequently bought by the Yellow Pages at a value of S$6.6 million.

After the sale of ShowNearby, they were looking for a new venture to start, and Vanitee came along. Mr Gan and Mr Choy knew some friends in the beauty industry who asked if they were interested in a venture. They used a part of the money from the sale of ShowNearby to invest into Vanitee. The business started with the launch of Vanitee Trove in January 2012, a beauty-sampling box business, featuring premium brands. It subsequently evolved into the creation of a beauty services booking app, as the duo realised there was a demand and service gap that needed to be filled.

“We first got to do it because we had friends in the beauty space,” said Mr Gan. “Like all the businesses that I started, there is no consideration which industry it is in. Entering into any new industry, you need to learn. So, we spent the first few months learning all about the industry. The first few months was to really experience the industry, talking to people and understanding the market.”

When the founders started out, they had initially targeted the service for retail salons. But when they talked to the customers, they found that customers do not really care much about the brand, but who the artist serving them would be. If the artist is really good, and provides very good service and has a good personality, the customer follows where they go. The founders also discovered that beauty freelancers had no one serving them.

They decided to create a beauty services app to fill the gap in the market, linking the individual beauty professionals to customers.

The group launched Vanitee beauty app in May 2015.

“My co-founder, Thomas, and myself uncovered the potential in the spa and wellness industry, an industry worth an estimated US$94 billion (S$127 billion) in 2013. Crucially, we saw the irony that the simple process of shopping for and booking a relaxing spa can often turn out to be a frustrating exercise of Googling individual sites, wasted time comparing packages and eventually, relying on telephone or email booking enquiries to secure the service,” said Mr Tee, Spabbly’s co-founder and CEO. The duo then founded a spa-booking service aiming to provide a seamless, Uber-like instant booking experience for spas across Asia.

To date, Spabbly has secured the participation of more than 100 spas, mainly situated in key regional hotspots such as Bali, Bangkok, Phuket, Singapore and Bintan, featuring a selection of well over 700 treatments.

The Singapore-based company recently released its iOS app on Apple’s App store.

Meanwhile, Vanitee’s app grew to 1,700 artists and 14,000 customers in a year. Their app was well-received, as seen in the strong repeat rate in customers — about 30 per cent to 40 per cent return to the app to book on a monthly basis.

To deepen the business, Vanitee went on to acquire their competitor Mefitted.com a few weeks ago. Mefitted.com was bought at a low-to-mid six-digit acquisition on a part-share-part-cash deal.

Other than the Singapore market, both beauty-service providers have their sights set on the Asian market for growth. Both brands also intend to expand their businesses to attract more male customers.

Vanitee’s client base currently has 98 per cent female customers, while Spabbly has 80 per cent female customers.

Mr Tee, who pointed out that Spabbly’s business operations are regionally focused since day one, said: “It’s still in the early days for us as pioneers in this new exciting business and we aim to one day be the de-facto app on every home screen of spa lovers across the Asian region. In the Singapore and Australia markets, we are uniquely positioned to cater to the needs of frequent travellers making more than three to four trips every year within the region.”

Mr Gan said: “Singapore is a good starting market, but we definitely want to move out of Singapore as soon as the app is ready (for the overseas market). In the next three years we see overseas markets as critical to grow our business. We are looking at sizeable markets like Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan … Markets that are very huge on beauty and a natural thing for both men and women in those markets to adopt.”