- Romanian SaaS beauty marketplace – MERO has recently acquired Logbox.
- Logbox is a local software company that offers an easy-to-book and managed solution for beauty salons and healthcare facilities.
- This news follows their latest funding round of €300K back in October of 2021.
- So far, the company received €500K in funding and is looking to expand internationally.
MERO offers a platform for hair and beauty appointments. With it, professionals can showcase their services, synchronize their bookings digitally, and manage the saloon’s booking history with the help of an app. The idea is to free the beauty professionals from managing mundane tasks so that they can spend it focusing on creative work.
Through the Logbox acquisition, MERO can now offer its B2B clients the ability to send automated SMS to users to remind them of the booking, keep stock of subscriptions, and access detailed reports. Beauty companies will benefit from customer support, client reviews, and a boost in awareness from other players in the beauty market present in the app to grow together.
So far, MERO has been used by over 1200 professionals, while over 400 locations have been applying the Logbox solution in Romania. On the B2C side, MERO announced they have had over 1M client appointments in beauty salons in the last six months.
Growing a beauty salon marketplace
“Digitalisation allows salons to evolve rapidly and customers to easily access a wide range of top service providers,” Vlad Dobre, founder of Logbox, shared.
Growing together is also the MERO way. The tech startup was co-founded back in 2017 by Dragos Sebestin from Dolj and Catalin Lupu, who is also in charge of sales, from Craiova. Dragos has a background in computer software engineering, while Catalin is in business administration.
Andreea Trif and Elena Filip joined in 2021. Andreea is a product manager and managing partner and Elena is the CMO and partner. Andrea comes with economic expertise, and Elena contributes with business administration skills.
This month, Adrian Trif joined the team in the role of CEO and managing partner. He is an experienced entrepreneur and growth advisor who aims to scale the MERO solution internationally.
“We continue with accelerating growth to provide consumers with access to as many specialists as possible,” Adrian Trif says.
One tool to digitize beauty salons
Catalin Lungu, one of MERO’s clients in Romania says that he believes the beauty industry is in a similar place to the “pre-Booking.com” moment. “MERO’s vision is to actively contribute to the development of the beauty community in Romania. Time has become the most important resource and managing it has never been easier,” he adds.
One challenge that the MERO team is trying to overcome is the bookings that happen outside of business hours. Based on their research, 60% of the clients use MERO outside of the normal hours and during the weekend. Another one is bringing together in one solution all the digitized solutions that beauty salons need.
The MERO team shared with us that based on their studies, the hair, beauty, and wellness market in Romania has over 100K specialists. In the past two years, beauty salons have been digitizing their offers, which include services such as hairdressing, barbering, micro-pigmentation, make-up, manicure, and lash artists. Other players are joining this wave, like Stailer, which recently raised €1M from angel investors to digitize the vertical.
