If you have ever been, you know, Colombians love their beauty salons.
In South America in general, people are known to pay close attention to hair and nail care, and although it sometimes feels like there is a salon on every corner, it can often be difficult to find a trusted salon, or worse, actually get ahold of your desired beautician to book an appointment.
Phone book? Good luck. Online search? At best you might find one or two Facebook pages with outdated phone numbers for salons that may or may not still exist at an address that was missing a critical number.
The salon industry was experiencing high demand but was totally lacking an online presence. Booking appointments in advance was inefficient, if not impossible, and salons had very few options for promoting, bringing in new clients, and accessing marketing channels.
Enter Be Pretty, the Colombian-born salon application that has been bringing the booming salon and beauty industry into the age of technology.
It was only founded in late 2015 but by the end of 2016 the application had over 80,000 users across Chile and Colombia, already addicted to sharing their experiences and recommendations and getting bennies and promotions from their favorite local joints. The app works for Android, iOS and now has a web version.
The founding team originally developed the app to facilitate clients access to beauty centers and increase visibility for companies when they noticed the total vacuum of an online presence. Instead of seeing Colombia and Chile’s lack of digitization as an obstacle, they saw it as an opportunity, and were the first to create a platform and get salons on board.
And they have continued to innovatively fill other gaps existing between the beauty industry and state of the art technology. For instance, in August last year, the company signed a contract with Falabella to be their beauty product provider platform for purchases via Fallabella’s CMR card in Chile, Colombia, Perú and Argentina.
They bought their largest competitor, the Chilean company Mibell, as well last year and are looking to repeat their successful model in neighboring countries soon, so even more people can Be Pretty with ease.
