Fresha, a booking platform for beauty and wellness, raised new funding of $52.5 million, extending its $100 million Series C at a valuation of over $640 million.
WHO: Launched in 2015, Shedul described itself as a "SaaS-enabled marketplace" for salons and spas globally. Now rebranded as Fresha, the company allows consumers to discover, book, and pay for beauty and wellness appointments with local businesses via its marketplace, while salons, spas, and barbershops can leverage Fresha to manage their operations with its intuitive, subscription-free business software. The Fresha platform removes the critical pain points that service-based businesses often encounter by seamlessly facilitating the acceptance of online appointment bookings, processing of card payments, and management of customer records, along with automations for marketing, staffing, product inventory, and accounting, all in one place. In addition to its free offering, Fresha Plus provides partners with additional advanced features; rather than a traditional subscription model, the company collects fees on the usage of features for card payment processing and online bookings.
WHY: Fresha will put the new capital to use by further expanding its global community of partner salons and spas, to accelerate product development and drive marketplace bookings.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: "We believe that professionals like barbers, stylists and therapists should be able to focus on their craft without having to worry about the daily hassles of running their businesses," said Fresha co-founder and Chief of Product Nick Miller. "We're committed to providing the very best product with a seamless customer experience at the lowest price point."
“Our ecosystem proposition differs from the more traditional incumbent software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers that focus on a single offering," said Fresha founder and CEO William Zeqiri. "Business owners once had to utilize fragmented tools that attempt to solve operational challenges piecemeal; a business might use MailChimp for marketing, Wix for their website, Shopify to sell beauty products online, Square for payment processing, and other tools for calendar management and marketing. Our mission is to be the go-to one-stop-shop solution that addresses each and every pain point for the industry holistically, with an overarching vision to help connect the world to beauty and wellness.”
This unique approach is what excites Fresha's investors. "Fresha has positioned itself as a major player in the beauty and wellness industry with a large and loyal customer base," said Aaron Goldman, Global Co-Head of Financial Services and Managing Director at General Atlantic, in a statement. "We strongly believe in Fresha's balanced strategy of providing one of the best products in the market at no cost to salons and then driving monetization via payments and value-added services."
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