If you've ever traveled to the French countryside, you may have noticed something special about France. There are beauty salons even in seemingly sparsely populated towns.
French startup Planity is capitalizing on France's love for hair salons by launching a SaaS product specifically for hair salons. Over time, the company expanded into other types of beauty salons, such as barber shops and nail salons.
And it works surprisingly well, with over 40,000 small businesses currently relying on Planity for things like bookings. In fact, the startup recently raised a Series C round of €45 million ($48 million at current exchange rates) in a round led by InfraVia Capital Partners and a digital venture fund from existing investors Crédit Mutuel Innovation, Revaia and Bpifrance. are also participating.
Planity's trajectory is an interesting one, considering it's not the first big European tech company to try to simplify salon bookings. Notably, Treatwell is already deployed in his 12 countries in Europe and appears to have seized the opportunity of digitizing this highly fragmented market.
Doctolib for beauty salons
So, what is different from Planity? The startup's co-founder and CEO, Antoine Puymirat, first launched his online booking efforts in 2007. His first startup, called ClicRDV, was a white-label online booking solution for all types of businesses. It was acquired by Pages Jaune (now called SoLocal).
After a few years in SoLocal, he left the company and went back to square one with a more focused approach. Instead of creating a comprehensive booking solution, he decided to focus specifically on beauty salons.
Around the same time, Doctolib was becoming popular. This French startup, now a unicorn, has completely changed the way doctors and other health-related jobs are booked. The impact is even greater because the way French people deal with health issues has changed significantly.
Planity was inspired by Doctolib. It is a SaaS platform that completely replaces the good old paper notebooks widely used in beauty salons. When people call for an appointment, employees write down the appointment directly in Planity. And of course, you can also book online through Planity's app or his website. It becomes your single source of truth and simplifies salon management.
Unlike Treatwell, Planity does not charge a commission on each future sale. Instead, Planity is a traditional SaaS product with a monthly subscription fee. The main product currently costs 69 euros per month. (A little inside-out math means Planity is likely to generate recurring revenue in the tens of millions of euros per year.)
“Most of the existing players follow a traditional marketplace model, like Booking.com or TheFork,” Antoine Puymirat told me. “Customers pay a certain percentage of the total amount of each booking. However, this model does not work because some companies have not been able to reach large scale in Europe even though they have been in existence for 15 years. We realized that we don’t.”
The main problem, he says, is that most customers are repeat customers. You also don't want to pay fees every time you make a reservation. With Planity, the more your customers book online, the less time they waste on the phone and the less money they spend on it. That is why beauty salons recommend their customers to use his Planity.
“We want to go a little further than that. We also let companies manage their working hours. Employees can clock in and out in the morning and evening. We also accommodate vacations. We can export payroll information. ” Puimilla said.
Approximately 8 million people visit Planity every month. The platform processes approximately 10 million reservations each month, of which 4 million are booked directly by end customers on his Planity. Other appointments are entered manually by employees while speaking directly to the customer.
The platform handles waiting lists, sends reminders via text messages, and creates personalized schedules for each employee. Planity can also replace his POS solution for an additional fee of 20 euros per month.
Some clients obtain their payment terminals from Planity. In that case, Planity uses Stripe's API for its payments stack and takes a small cut of each transaction. However, small stores that have already partnered with banks to install payment terminals will be able to continue using those terminals.
The company's next focus is on wellness and fitness centers. Planity's main market remains its home country of France, but the company has also begun to grow in Belgium and Germany.
In addition to the fragmentation of the beauty salon industry, there are barriers to entry that create competitors for Planity. The company has a large sales team. They go to meet new clients and make sure they understand how the software platform works.
This strategy is capital intensive and requires a solid sales strategy to work. Currently, Planity employs approximately 200 sales staff and plans to add more.