Danielle Cohen-Shoehet has developed a technology platform that helps spa, studio and salon industry owners manage their operations. While a student at Princeton, she saw firsthand the challenges of running a small business as a freelance makeup artist, one of her jobs.
So she taught herself how to code, started in 2016, raised $2.8 million in early seed funding from Techstars and angel investors, and ran her company, GlossGenius, for five years before closing a $16.4 million round last November.
GlossGenius today has more than 40,000 customers in the beauty and wellness space and sees nearly $2 billion in annual transaction volume on its platform, CEO and founder Cohen Shohet told TechCrunch in an interview. The platform aims to be a vertical software “business-in-a-box” for beauty professionals, a goal Cohen-Shoehet likened to what Toast previously did in the restaurant industry.
GlossGenius Founder and CEO Danielle Cohen-Schoet. Image Credits: GlossGenius
After seeing “triple-digit” year-over-year revenue growth since its last fundraising round, Gloss Genius has raised another round of capital, Cohen-Schochet said. The New York-based startup has secured $25 million in funding led by Imaginary Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Left Lane Capital.
Cohen-Shoehet said this latest round represents a 3x markup of the company’s November 2021 fundraising valuation and is in the “hundreds of millions” of dollars, though she did not share an exact valuation number.
More than 70% of GlossGenius’ customers are women, and a significant proportion are minorities, according to Cohen-Schoet. This is partly due to the nature of the industry – in salon and spa ownership, “the private sector average for women is more than twice that of African American and Asian business owners,” said Cohen-Shoehet.
Helping small businesses do big things is at the core of the company’s mission, said Cohen Shohet.
“It’s exciting to be able to grow from one customer and the fabric that we create, to somehow be an engine of economic activity, an engine of economic activity for entrepreneurs of all backgrounds and the small businesses that are helping them. Play on the same level playing field as the big companies,” Cohen-Shoehet said.
In a way, the epidemic led to the success of Gloss Genius. The platform automates many back office tasks and customer experience for their small business clients, including accounting and finance, inventory management, online booking and email marketing.
“Post-pandemic, one of the most noticeable things is that small business owners are more willing than ever to embrace the promise of digitization,” says Cohen-Shoecht.
GlossGenius today has no dedicated sales professionals on the team, so customer acquisition is largely done through word-of-mouth, according to Cohen-Shoehet. According to GlossGenius, on average, its customers earn 25-100% more income for using the product.
The company plans to use the new funding to increase its workforce by 150, focusing on engineering, production and design, as well as marketing, Cohen said. GlossGenius plans to continue investing in new product development, especially for fintech operations.
Cohen-Shoehet said the company has been “on a product innovation tear” in the last few months, and has launched a “no-show protection stack” to help GlossGenius owners see and reduce the number of appointment cancellations they see. Tap-to-Pay embedded payment integration with Apple, which allows employees to use mobile phones as hardware to process transactions.
Ultimately, Cohen-Shoehet’s goal is to build a comprehensive, comprehensive business management platform for small business owners in the beauty and security space.
“I think the need for freedom, flexibility and control among business owners has never been greater,” Cohen-Shoecht.
