Salon Booking Service StyleSeat Launches Offers Platform To Pull Stylists Away From Daily Deal Sites

StyleSeat, the “OpenTable for hair stylists” backed by Founders Fund, 500 Startups, Ashton Kutcher, and others (including a who’s who of angel investors), is today launching a service called “New Client Offers.” The platform allows salons to reach out to potential new clients by offering discounts or extra services redeemable upon their first visit. The offers will be available in the company’s online marketplace where customers can also browse area salons, search for professionals based on location, speciality or price, read reviews, view photos of the stylist’s work, and then book their appointments directly.
“We did a lot of thinking and research to understand what’s the best way to help grow the businesses of these salons,” says co-founder and CEO Melody McCloskey of the new platform. “We found that the only way a lot of the industry gets the customer in the door is through the daily deal model,” she says, “and there’s a lot of flaws in that model.”
The offers platform is a twist on daily deals, which McCloskey believes is not sustainable for salons, or good for salon customers, either. With daily deals, salons are giving up around 75% of their service price, she says. Plus, they get overwhelmed by a large number of clients, and generally only see a 20% return rate on the clients who came in because of a daily deal. Customers, meanwhile, only get access to the salons offering the “cheap” deals, which doesn’t always mean the better salons. And, she adds, StyleSeat also offers a “more authentic experience” because stylists write about their services in their own words and post photos of their actual work.