Handsome: Where beauticians learn with stars, and stylists let their hair down

"Oversights are open doors," says April Dominguez, CEO and founder of Handsome, an Austin-based startup whose application courts excellence masters over a buzzy stage where magnificence experts learn and interface, recruit and organization. "We help magnificence masters to build their pay, get more clients, and open a salon with the most recent industry bits of knowledge. We are an all in one resource for all training, each teacher, each brand, each method." With 1.4 million salon work environments and 1.8 million hair and nail representatives, work examiners anticipate magnificence industry business will grow multiple times quicker than different ventures in this really long period, driven by a generational interest for administrations to shine up and look sharp.

"Conventional vocation stages don't gel with beauticians," says Dominguez. With a shiny application UX more Depop than Glassdoor, Handsome adopts an unashamed strategy to building the vocations of beauticians, stylists, cosmetics specialists, colorists, microbladers, manicurists, estheticians, or the application's loving catch-all, "magnificence industry tricksters."

Changing the magnificence scene, a Latina founder breaks raising support hindrances

This mid year, Current Salon, in an industry profile of Dominguez, commented that "Handsome has brought about $2.3M up in investment subsidizing, when under 100 Latina founders in 2021 had at any point brought more than $1M up in capital." How it's done: "As a startup, Coronavirus hit us pre-financing. We had no capital. What's more, we became 1,000% naturally, as salons were covered and beauticians were stripped away from their networks," says Dominguez. "You need to comprehend that most in the excellence business consider their work to be a daily existence's calling. For basic inquiries of how beauticians planned to take care of their families and keep their salons open, Handsome turned into the web-based asset for peer support, extra instruction, and how to track down admittance to more pay. "In California, almost half-million beauticians were jobless for huge bits of 2020 and even into 2021, which constrained magnificence masters across the business to meet up."

With salons presently completely returned, Handsome scores 5.5k+ week after week cooperations in gathering strings across 35,000 enrolled clients, including a fourth of New York City's enlisted beauticians. This July, Google for New businesses picked Handsome as one of the primary beneficiaries of the Latino Founders Asset, getting $100,000 in non-dilutive subsidizing, Cloud credits, profound mentorship, and active programming and backing from Google. "With the assets, we will enhance development across our freshest client experience highlight: Geniuses, bringing the excellence and hair stylist industry's most tip top instructors to show methods and construct local area in the application," says Dominguez.

As salons and barbershops arise as practical tech organizations, Handsome is surfacing as a central member in an environment to carefully change individual consideration administrations. The application's biggest monetary patrons to date remains Macintosh Funding and Assistant, a Dark claimed New York-based SaaS suite esteemed at $750 million, that handles the functional bare essential of salon the board.

The magnificence business is 90% female and 66% Dark and Latinx. What's more, it's where you can be pioneering, bring your own style, and burst your own way. Many previously detained people have had the option to construct fruitful vocations and work their own studios," says Dominguez. "We are providing beauticians with a computerized local area of their kindred friends and experts. That is something beauticians have been generally avoided with regards to."

Pink hair? Couldn't care less. Handsome reconsiders the profession stage for magnificence geniuses

"Beauticians and excellence stars have consistently interested me as renegades who can wear hot pink hair, shape their own vocations, regardless clear more than $100K a year according to their own preferences," said Dominguez. "With Handsome, we are wagering on stylists' desired plan to cooperate with a stage that is as energetic about styling and excellence as they are."

The Handsome application's broad substance library incorporates selective sound training and Geniuses content from professionals like Arod the Hair stylist, Jenny Strebe, Alfredo Lewis, J Ladner; salon business and the board execution mentor Nina Tulio; and men's custodian Mira Chai, who makes honorary pathway searches for Simu Liu, George Clooney, and Kendrick Lamar from her celebrated carport studio in Hollywood.

"Gaze these beauticians upward. They have victorious profiles as Do-It-Yourself business people who defeated mistrust to consummate their strategies and fabricate their own followings," adds Dominguez. On Handsome, these quick moving instructional exercises from ace beauticians are parsed out as "microdoses," in 45 second to three-minute lumps that Dominguez portrays as "ideal for salon back bar breaks between clients."

"With Handsome, we assist beauticians with making the professions of their most extravagant fantasies through credible discussions and masterclasses," says Dominguez. "We have associations with fifty of the business' greatest beauticians. Indeed, they show gifted procedures, however they additionally show advertising, they educate outlook. They take you through the stuff to turn into a VIP craftsman."

Salons and barbershops are presently tech organizations in a $62 billion industry

"Who trims your hair?" is an inquiry with a $62 billion piece of the pie reply in the U.S. alone. "Over 1.8 million individuals trim hair or oversee salons. That is more hair specialists than specialists, a greater number of stylists than cops." says Dominguez. "However with regards to center business capabilities and instruction needs, numerous magnificence stars actually depend on a blend of Craigslist and YouTube to acquire abilities and recruit ability. So with Handsome, we rethought the vocation stage for excellence experts."

A huge swath of excellence experts make up the 1.8 million laborers in the individual appearance industry. "Handsome has 32 choices for callings including cosmetics craftsmen, nail specialists, microbladers, rub advisors, and estheticians we additionally serve on the stage," adds Dominguez.

As salons and hairstyling parlors foster a computerized impression as important as their involved administrations, Handsome use its organization with the barbershop booking application Assistant, a nearby computerized barbershop the board framework based on comparative certifiable examination into beautician and client trouble spots. "Having Assistant back us as financial backers (by means of the Local area Asset) has been an open discussion to financial backers that we're in a similar industry however are neighboring each other in the arising tech biological system for magnificence and stylist masters," adds Dominguez.

With in-person occasions continued, Handsome has likewise been developing its client base, filling in as the authority occasion organizing applications of CT Hairdresser Exhibition and BarberCon in Atlanta, Dallas, New York, and LA. As a promoting methodology, Handsome has likewise carefully connected the customary involved salon demo and expert hair devices giveaway that form client dedication. "We have worldwide brands like Andis Trimmers, Alfaparf, and Babyliss who have given Handsome huge number of dollars worth of expert apparatuses," says Dominguez. "At the point when you complete the microdose series supported by that organization,. It's a twofold brand purchase in-beauticians get free training, while the brand is elevated to buyers through beauticians they trust."

From in disguise mode to industry schooling: Handsome's insider approach

Dominguez and her sister Nikki, a long-term beautician and cross country teacher, initially established Handsome in 2019. "We are worked for and by beauticians," says Dominguez. "I have a cousin who entered cosmetology school at 16 and had her own boutique by 18. This industry permits individuals to graph their own courses assuming they have the drive."

In Texas, Dominguez initially followed a more conventional corporate way through a lifelong in oil and gas. "I helped raise and convey $130 million in capital and developed the organization to north of fifty representatives. I was in these corporate meeting room gatherings where I was additionally the main minority in those settings. I didn't necessarily feel like I was serving my own local area," says Dominguez. "Simultaneously, I was all the while watching my sister and other relatives push forward according to their very own preferences through the excellence business."

On Instagram and TikTok, the flood of hairdresser virtual entertainment stars can propose that web-based entertainment improves on beauticians' positions. "Indeed, the facts confirm that Instagram has made online entertainment big names of excellence experts, however that is a client-confronting network. With potential clients watching, that implies web-based entertainment is the last spot a beautician or hairdresser would feel open to requesting an expertise overhaul, says Dominguez. "That is where Handsome succeeds. We are a local area of beauticians, industry instruction, and distributed help."

"We're not a two-sided commercial center. For an application like Booksy or ShearShare it makes a difference that you immerse a city to get that market streaming," says Dominguez. "With Handsome, our foundation is based around advanced sharing, so we can consolidate showcasing efforts that are both computerized and active."

For upskilling beauticians, Handsome likewise includes a helpful undercover mode. "We have the application highlight, so individuals can pose inquiries they would be apprehensive to freely post. Perhaps it's a strategy question about balayage and featuring," says Dominguez. "During the pandemic, there were hard-hitting posts like, 'Hello, it's against the law to trim hair now, however my child needs food. Would it be a good idea for me to bring somebody into my carport and trim their hair? These were the genuine inquiries that were occurring. For beauticians and magnificence aces, the pandemic enhanced the incongruities that influence our industry."

Backing magnificence aces, backing Latinx founders

"At the point when I initially began pitching Handsome, I would take all gatherings and discuss the business to anybody. The initial 80% of financial backers I pitched were more seasoned Caucasian men, and truth is, most of them were bare. It was exceptionally scary at the outset since I could see their eyes stare off into the great unknown," says Dominguez. "I