Technology has connected hair and makeup professionals with customers like never before.
However the needs of the client always seem to come first, says Angelina Liparteliani, at the expense of the beauticians themselves.
As a part of an assessment for her Masters degree, Liparteliani researched the state of beauty services in the UK and uncovered issues experienced by freelancers: 63% have occasional difficulties in finding clients; 89% could not find clients straight after finishing beauty courses; and 45% had resorted to taking bookings via social media messages – without the security of actually being paid for their services on time – as they could not find a ‘trustworthy’ appointment management tool.
Liparteliani, a digital marketing and social media professional with experience at the likes of Johnson & Johnson, responded by launching a platform of her own – GLAMLAB.
“Services that were already on the market were focused on the clients’ satisfaction more than on the happiness of the freelancers that work hard to keep these clients satisfied and bring profits,” she tells BusinessCloud.
“We set a purpose to create a service that focuses on freelancer satisfaction as much as it focuses on that of their clients. We are very excited to see this vision come to life.”
After many salons were forced to close by COVID-19, there was a huge influx of beauticians into the independent freelance industry. Liparteliani estimates that 24% of industry full-time workers converted into freelancers, making up almost 70% of the beauty industry in 2021.
The London-based beauty Software-as-a-Service startup helps UK mobile makeup artists and hairstylists to get connected to clients and book them in. After the concept was introduced in 2021, it took a full year to define a concept, draw up a business plan, generate a statement of work and technical specification, find designing and developing agencies, build, test and launch.
It is now ready to take on registrations from beauty freelancers, ensuring their services are listed, bookings systemised and payments secured. Having already built a pre-launch community of 15,000 followers across all social accounts and more than 250+ active freelancers on its waitlist, it is off to a flying start.
“Makeup and everything related to the beauty industry have always been my passion. When I saw an opportunity and a need to create something useful for the industry I could not pass it up,” Liparteliani explains.
“Launching a business just after a global pandemic perhaps isn’t an ideal scenario; however, we’ve discovered the new needs of the industry and an increased amount of freelancers that would benefit from GLAMLAB.
“We wanted to create a product that would meet all the demands of freelancers and set it our goal to take away their worries associated with finding clients, receiving payments on time and processing cancellations.”
She adds: “We’re focused on London right now, but the website is open for registrations of specialists in other UK locations.
“One of the marketing channels we’re planning to use is TikTok, and TikTok influencers… it’s a bit tricky to target by location there, therefore we are looking to have a reasonable number of freelancers in other major locations too.
“Right now we’re bootstrapping the business, but are definitely considering a fundraise in the future.”