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How PopMyDay did it Right: Start-up Story

By jwork 4th May 2017

Founded by two HEC Graduates, Morgane L’Hostis and Charles Berenguer, Popmyday is a new disrupting beauty app to book all your beauty and wellness appointments, anywhere, anytime, at the tap of button. Either at home or at your office, after work hours or during the weekend. Popmyday services range from makeup to hair, nail and massages. All the professionals (called “Popartist”) are screened, tested and hand-picked to guarantee a high standard service.
The service opened in Paris area in Fall 2014. Bookings are available through an iPhone and Android application or a responsive website www.popmyday.com

Morgane L’Hostis shares her experience –

Q1) Tell us a little about PopMyDay and your personal motivation for starting it?

Morgane: Popmyday meets the needs of the Parisian working girls. Indeed, they hardly find the time to take care of themselves! Apart from working hours, it’s quite hard to find an opened beauty salon and these places are always crowded on weekends. Moreover, traditional beauty booking websites really focus on special offers to the detriment of the quality of the services offered by the salons.

Q2) Can you give us a rundown of how PopMyDay works?

Morgane: Popmyday is an on-demand beauty app and responsive website. You just have to go on Popmyday, choose the beauty or wellness service you’d like to book, choose the day and time and that’s it! We will match you with the perfect Popartist that will come to your place at the time you asked. Nothing more to do than just open your door: even your payment will be done automatically the day after your appointment. After that, you can leave your feedback and tell us everything about your Popartist, his/her services: we’re all ears!

Q3) What are the biggest challenges you have faced, how have you overcome these?

Morgane: The biggest challenge we face everyday is being able to scale our business without scaling-down the quality of our services. We need much more Popartists but, beyond that, we need really good ones. To overcome this situation, we just launched Poptrainings where we help our good Popartists to become even more efficient and perfectionist in their job.

Q4) According to your experience, what is the most important thing to keep in mind for all on demand companies.

Morgane: Loyalty is key for on demand companies like Popmyday. First of all, we have to retain our customers but more than that, we also have to win the loyalty of our professionals to be sure that they don’t try to give their direct contact to our clients. It’s not always easy but if both the customers and Popartists are living a great experience there is no reason for them not to be loyal.

Q5) Do you plan to launch services in new regions? If yes, what would be your strategy?

Morgane: We’d love to expand Popmyday services in other metropolis in France (Lyon, Bordeaux, etc.) and abroad (London?)! Being a French company is truly an advantage in the beauty industry, especially internationally and we want to make the most out of it!

Q6) Could you shed some light on the technology and tools used to build Popmyday?

Morgane: Our app and databases are running on AWS. We use Segment to collect and stream customer data with a mix of Customer.io, Urban Airship and Twilio for our CRM and marketing automation. We use Amplitude for analytics, Stripe for payments and Front for customer care.

Q7) What is one particular Marketing Tool or process you swear by that has helped you gain more users on the platform?

Morgane: Social media is key! For our business, a strong relationship with the bloggers and other influencers is crucial.

Q8) What sets you apart from the competition?

Morgane: Our competitors are Treatwell and Balinea, huge beauty booking platforms offering knock-down prices. Even if they don’t really offer a lot of at home services, they catch an important part of the demand because of their aggressive marketing process. Our value proposition is not on discounts but we care about offering reasonable and affordable prices and, more than that, we guarantee an excellent quality of services thanks to our drastic selection of professionals (Popartists) and our flexibility on scheduling the appointments anytime, anywhere!


Q9) What is your biggest achievement to date?

Morgane: How did you go about accomplishing this? We are really proud to deal with brands for our “Editions of the month”! Some international, very famous, brands chose us to help their digital strategy and to enter the on demand services. As an example, we made a collaboration with Estée Lauder a month ago and are now talking with another luxurious beauty brand to imagine something for September! Stay tuned J


Q10) Where do you see yourself in five years?

Morgane: We want to become the 1st connected mobile beauty salon and we want to be able to offer all of the beauty services that can be found in traditional beauty salons. We are already working on it as we will soon offer new services like haircuts, wax hair removal, etc.

Vertical– On Demand Beauty

Headquarters– Paris

Funding/Worth– One million euros in first funding from W3 Corporate.

Founders– Morgane L’Hostis (26, HEC Paris Graduate) and Charles Berenguer (31, Supinfo & HEC Paris Graduate).

Founded– on Fall 2014

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