With many customers still feeling nervous about visiting salons, in-home beauty services have become popular, and the dedication is only building.
Iman Davamoni, founder and CEO of Purely Polished, says that business has been booming since restrictions lifted.
“Once lockdown ended, we saw a massive spike in our booking numbers with a 300% increase for the month. We offer over seven different categories of treatments including manicures and pedicures, haircuts, hair styling, makeup, massages, facials and more,” says Iman, noting that the most in-demand service immediately after lockdown lifted was for nails. “Although we had a huge increase in bookings, we were also having to manage the number of beauty professionals working. Not all were feeling comfortable enough to get out there and we wanted to be as supportive as possible by giving them the time to return to work when they were ready. Now our most popular categories are nails, massages, haircuts and we’re slowly seeing an increase in hair and make-up for weddings and small events.”
The boom in demand is seeing in-home service specialist Urban Company rethink their move to remove beauty services from their offering. We reported in March that popular beauty services app Glamazon had been purchased by Urban Company, an in-home services app that was keen to expand into the beauty arena. At the time of purchase, Glamazon employed close to 2,000 beauty workers. And then Coronavirus hit. “Unfortunately, due to COVID, Urban Company has removed home beauty services from our app offering. Given the close contact between professional and partner during the delivery of beauty treatments, in addition to the nature of travelling mobile services, we felt that offering these bookings posed a risk in this Covid-climate,” says representative Lauren Warwick. But given the spike in demand since restrictions have lifted, the company plans to bring the beauty element back. “We will hopefully relaunch this service at the end of the year or early next year,” Lauren said. “We are looking forward to re-launching beauty services at the right time in the future, with some very special additions to our offering!”
And according to Iman, business shows no sign of slowing down, with clients that opted to try the in-home services until they felt comfortable to visit a salon, choosing instead to stick with Purely Polished offerings. “We gained a lot of new clients because of Covid. During the lockdown we were extremely busy managing the phenomenal amounts of email and phone enquiries from people hoping we were running an underground – or black market – mobile beauty service, which we were not. Most of the public had not thought of using a mobile beauty service previously so this was a real education piece. This led to an overall increase in booking numbers for our at-home services because people are feeling safer to have one beauty professional in their home rather than going to a busy salon.”
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