OUR OPEN SOURCE STRATEGY.

Co-founders of Flossie, Jenene Crossan (left) and Steven Torrance (right)

I wanted to take a moment to be transparent on the evolution of our business that we’re taking. We’re fortunate to be sitting in a good position right now and I want to share our journey so that others in the industry can benefit from the support we’ve received.

We have spent the last month considering the consumer, salon trends and our own business strategy, and I’d like to share these with you.

A TIME TO CONSIDER OUR FUTURE AND ROLE.

Our purpose is to create exceptional user experiences and we believe we are the best in the world at “retailing services”. We also believe that services are the last true bastion of ecommerce to be properly explored. We have proven that by providing seamless, frictionless software we can create really beautiful user experiences for customers (and revenue for salons). Our commitment to being a single, powerful API (aka “a plug in”) for the entire hair and beauty industry, that connects with existing (and often, legacy or outdated) salon software, means salons all over the world can better market their services directly to their existing customers and create immediate revenue actions.

If you’re a Kiwi, this sounds a bit different to the flossie.com you know in New Zealand. For most of our New Zealand partners and customers, they only know us as a marketplace; somewhere you can book and pay for a hair or beauty service choosing between a range of service providers. We’ve prided ourselves on building a customer experience that is fast, super easy to use and creates revenue for many hundreds of small businesses across the nation.

However, in a post-Covid world we believe that the marketplace model is no longer a sustainable business for salons. This is not because it doesn’t make us money (it has and it does), but because we do not think it’s the right thing for the industry to continue to use.

Let me explain further:

1. We feel salon pricing should be reassessed and become more savvy ongoing. This means we don’t think a substantial cut of the margin should go to a third party marketing platform — it seems infeasible and unsustainable now.
2. Most of our customers use Flossie to simply book at the same place again and again. They choose to do this on our booking platform because the experience is fast, convenient and effortless. Although not a factor for us, we do believe blatant marketing to customers to move salons to access new places at better prices is no longer the right thing to do.
3. The flip-side of a marketplace has always been the discounting strategy. We believe this marketing tactic should be dropped in the salon industry. We do not think that the antidote to ‘spare time’ is to simply ‘sell it cheaper’. We believe the answer lies in better marketing — by the salons themselves and in a more proactive manner.
4. The nature of the industry history has meant that many salons have relied and waited on a customer to “show-up” when they’re ready, and as a result the salons haven’t kept up with technology requirements of modern consumers. In addition, substantially inadequate and woeful legacy booking software have made making an appointment way too hard.

A FOUR-FOLD STRATEGY FOR OUR FUTURE.

1. We are growing our team and doubling our efforts in Powered by Flossie to help salons improve their own website booking experiences and remove any reliance on a third party market place to do that job for them. Soon, you’ll be able to see the results of our efforts out in the global industry.
2. Now is the time for real and permanent change. Over the coming months we will gently exit the marketplace business model. In the interim, we will be only focusing on hair services where we believe we can add the most value for a safe customer journey. Whilst we continue to operate we will drop our commission to 7%.
3. If you’re a customer with a Flossie booking — nothing changes, your credit, vouchers and appointments will be honoured as promised and booked (unless the lockdown dates change again — in which case, we’ll be in touch).
4. We will immediately exit the beauty service businesses. However, we will be providing tools and access to our audience for salons (and with an immediate focus on beauty businesses) to market themselves. Kicking off with a webinar this week (which will be provided later as a video), we’ll also share resources to our salon network (and to anyone else who wants it) on what they can do to be ready for the ‘regrowth’. This will include access to our social tools to promote themselves — all of this will be free of charge.

OUR COMMITMENT

Our business is in good shape and because of this we feel a deep sense of responsibility to pay that forward and help others. We are deeply committed to a sustainable future for the services industry and will continue to be providing iterative, proven software that connects existing customers to salons more efficiently.

We will be running a webinar this Friday 24th April, 11am NZT to expand on the macro and micro trends we’re seeing for the industry; please feel free to come along armed with questions and challenges.

• Jenene Crossan, CEO and Co-founder