Salonkee, Europe's premier salon management solution and booking platform, has raised €28 million in growth capital. PeakSpan Capital, a growth-stage, B2B, software-focused investment firm with offices in New York and Silicon Valley, led the round.
WHO: Founded in 2016, Salonkee offers salon owners a soup-to-nuts solution—supporting everything from online booking and scheduling to integrated online and in-store payments, CRM and messaging/communication, resource and inventory planning, loyalty program management, and accounting/finance, among others. The platform's comprehensive nature and the solution's breadth have contributed to the company’s rapid growth trajectory. With best-in-class net revenue retention of 135%, Salonkee has long-proven the sustainability and success of its model in an SMB market, which is usually plagued by higher churn rates. The deliberate approach the company has pursued to market expansion and expertise the team has developed in understanding the keys to success in each market—from language requirements to local regulations and an appreciation for cultural barriers—has quickly catapulted Salonkee into a market leadership position and resulted in deep penetration of every market the company has focused on to date.
WHY: The funding will be used to extend market penetration further across Europe, continue investment in innovation, and expand its global team to capitalize on the demand for its solution.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Matt Melymuka, co-founder and Managing Partner at PeakSpan Capital, noted, “The Salonkee team identified a massive market opportunity in Europe early on, characterized by a highly fragmented landscape of competitors with no clear market leader and a suite of outdated or simplistic solutions. The team has demonstrated an incredibly impressive track record of rapid, capital efficient growth and has been surgical in deploying a well-defined scaling playbook to methodically expand to new European markets and quickly establish market leadership and penetration. The go-to-market engine the team has built is one of the more well-oiled machines we’ve seen and has driven tremendous growth with remarkable predictability and consistency. We’re privileged to partner with Salonkee to capitalize on the opportunity to further extend its leadership position in the highly strategic European market.”
“The majority of salons across Europe today are still being managed either without the use of technology, or they have only implemented a standard point-of-sale solution with a basic booking or scheduling platform to accept appointments online. The opportunity to leverage software to optimize every element of their operations is huge,” added Tom Michels, co-founder and CEO of Salonkee. “We’ve developed a comprehensive, end-to-end solution enabling customers to digitize all aspects of their operation, yielding tremendous efficiency gains and mind-blowing ROI. Our platform provides everything needed to run a salon business in the modern era from a single pane of glass, offered at a disruptive price point. This makes our solution incredibly sticky and mission critical for our customers. We’re thrilled to have PeakSpan on board as a partner and look forward to investing the proceeds from this financing to continue to deliver the best possible solution in market to our customers.”
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