10Beauty, creator of the first full salon-quality manicure machine, announced it will launch at the end of this year, having secured $38 million in equity financing, including a newly closed $17 million extension to their Series A led by Shine Capital.
WHO: Alex Shashou and Justin Effron co-founded 10Beauty and serve as Co-CEOs. Shashou and Effron previously founded ALICE, a B2B hospitality software platform acquired by Expedia Group, Inc. for $130 million. Chris Casey, co-founder and CTO, is a robotics expert with more than 25 years' experience in developing consumer robotics. He was on the original team that invented the Roomba robot vacuum for iRobot, where he spent 13 years.
10Beauty is leveraging robotics and automation to reimagine how people interact with machines to receive beauty services. The company's first product, "The 10," can perform a full manicure without human intervention. Insert in a pod, customize the manicure on a mobile app, slip in your hand, and let the machine remove the polish, file and shape the nails, brush away the cuticles, apply new polish, and dry the final product. The full manicure process takes roughly as long as a traditional manicure but on the customer's timetable.
The company employs roughly 30 engineers and plans to launch its first product, a fully automated salon-quality manicure machine, in the second half of 2024.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: "The way beauty services are delivered has not meaningfully changed over the course of our lifetimes," 10Beauty co-founders and Co-CEOs Alex Shashou and Justin Effron said. "For decades, getting your hair, nails, or makeup done required relying on someone else's timetable and commitment to excellence. The 10 is built for convenience and consistent quality, regardless of where the manicure is performed."
"For years, companies have attempted to launch nail painting robots but to limited customer adoption given none of them can perform a full manicure," Shashou and Effron said. "We started this process thinking primarily about the at-home market, but then were blown away by how much demand there was from businesses that wanted to offer manicures to their customers without any of the traditional overhead."
"Our goal is to make the manicure the most convenient beauty service available. We will accomplish this by placing a machine everywhere our customer already is, so they can get a manicure while getting their hair done, visiting the spa, shopping, working or performing other tasks," Shashou and Effron said. "We know our customers live in a right-here-right-now era and are hungry for better options when it comes to beauty services. The expectation has been set for products to fit conveniently into the existing flow of life, whether someone is working out, brewing a cup of coffee, attending a board meeting, or conducting just about any other task in the day."
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