Traveling in rural France may have revealed a French quirk. Even less-populated villages have hair salons.
French company Planity has launched a SaaS platform for hair salons, taking advantage of France’s love of them. The firm then included barbers and nail shops.
More than 40,000 small companies use Planity for appointment scheduling and more, proving its success. Recently, the business secured €45 million in Series C funding, headed by InfraVia Capital Partners and including current investors Crédit Mutuel Innovation, Revaia, and Bpifrance’s Digital Venture fund. .
Planity’s journey is fascinating since it’s not the first large European software startup to streamline beauty salon appointment scheduling. Treatwell is operating in 12 European nations and seems to have seized the digitizing potential of this fragmented sector.
Beauty Salon Doctolib
So what distinguishes a plan? In 2007, company co-founder and CEO Antoine Puymirat began online appointment booking. His initial venture, ClicRDV, offered white-label online booking for all enterprises. Pages Jaune (now SoLocal) bought it.
After many years at SoLocal, he departed and started again with a more concentrated approach. Instead of designing a general appointment solution, he targeted beauty shops.
Doctolib was also gaining popularity. The French unicorn firm has revolutionized doctor and health appointment scheduling. More importantly, it revolutionized how French people approach health concerns.
Doctolib had an influence on Planity. The SaaS platform replaces the paper notebooks used in hair salons. Employees immediately record appointments in Planity when consumers call. Planity’s app and website allow online appointment booking. This one source of truth makes salon administration simpler.
Planity doesn’t commission future sales like Treatwell. Planity is a standard SaaS solution with monthly fees. The primary package is €69/month. (A quick estimate suggests Planity makes tens of millions of euros in yearly recurring income.)
“Most of the existing players have adopted a traditional marketplace model like Booking.com or TheFork,” Antoine Puymirat said. Clients pay a portion of each reservation. We discovered that this approach wasn’t working since some firms have been operating for 15 years but never really took off in Europe.”
He says the primary problem is that most clients return. You don’t want to pay commissions for appointments. As more consumers schedule appointments online with Planity, you spend less time on the phone and pay less. That’s why beauty salons recommend Planity.
“We go further. We let companies set working hours. In the morning and evening, workers may clock in and out. We arrange holidays. We can export payroll data, Puymirat remarked.
About eight million individuals visit Planity monthly. Planity processes 10 million reservations every month, 4 million of which are direct client bookings. Employees manually enter other appointments while chatting with customers.
The technology manages waiting lists, texts reminders, and organizes personnel schedules. Planity may replace POS for €20 per month.
Planity provides payment terminals to certain customers. Planity leverages Stripe’s APIs for the payment stack and takes a tiny fee out of each transaction. Small establishments that collaborate with their banks for payment terminals may retain them.
The organization will thereafter manage wellness and fitness establishments. Planity is growing in Belgium and Germany, but its primary market is France.
Planity’s competitors face a barrier to entry and the beauty salon industry’s fragmentation. The firm has several salespeople. Meet new customers to ensure they grasp the software platform.
This tactic is expensive and needs a good sales plan. Planity employs 200 salespeople and aims to add more.
