Described as the “Uber of Beauty,” Stylisted makes you feel like a celebrity, bringing the best freelance hairstylists and makeup artists to your door with a couple swipes of your smartphone. No more factoring in variables like traffic, weather or childcare in order to look your best. The practicality and efficiency appeal to busy moms and high-powered executives alike. In the past two years, Stylisted has expanded to four cities — New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Co-founders Julia Carmona and Lauren Katzberg met at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, launching Stylisted the same week they graduated.
Make It Better caught up with the founders right after they launched in Washington, D.C., and rolled out a new app, creating a more seamless experience across mobile and web. Here, they share some of their biggest challenges, how they overcame them and their plans for the future.
Make It Better: You created Stylisted at University of Chicago, in a very male-dominated environment. How did you get investors to take a beauty business seriously?
Lauren Katzberg: We experimented with a number of different angles, but at the end of the day, these are investors, so we flipped the story. Instead of the pain point, we started telling the story from an industry perspective — that this is a $42 billion industry that’s ripe for disruption. We went very data-heavy when beginning our spiel.
The pain point is most interesting for our customers and to us but for a male-dominated audience, you lose them. We tailor our speech based on who we’re speaking to. You cannot get frustrated. It might be annoying that people aren’t immediately receptive when they hear the word “beauty.” But never use that as an excuse and find an angle to engage anybody.
You’ve mentioned that it’s hard as a first-time female entrepreneur without a track record to raise money. Why do you think that is and do you find it getting any easier?
LK: I think it is getting easier because we are building a track record for success. Now when I go out to fundraise, I know I’ve done it before and it gives me confidence and sets me up for success. Men are often evaluated on their potential and charisma while women are evaluated on their track record. We’ve gotten more comfortable with promoting ourselves and being willing to speak about what we’ve accomplished.
Julia Carmona: I think this go-around we have such a great team of advisors, supporters and investors that have our backs.
LK: We’re gearing up for our next round of funding and we have some exciting meetings lined up. We are telling the story of the last two-and-a-half years and vision for the next five years. So far that passion and excitement is coming through. We’re just looking for the right partner to take us to the next phase.
JC: The landscape has also changed a bit. The first go-around we were proving the concept, and now that’s more widely accepted and we’re telling a more unique story for Stylisted and how we’ve built a marketplace. We’re much more of a technology resource and tool for these microenterprises in the new gig economy.
LK: The last time we were fundraising we were tasked with convincing investors that people do this. I think now people understand that women are outsourcing their beauty needs and we’re able to focus on what differentiates Stylisted from other businesses in the beauty space. Right now we’re really the only marketplace, meaning we emphasize the supply side as much as our clients. Our biggest focus is that we are not commoditizing the services we are offering. The onus is on the client to choose the best-fit stylist for their needs and the stylist is able to promote themselves as an independent business owner, and charge prices that are a reflection of their services and experiences. And we’re there every step of the way to help.
When you first founded Stylisted, it was called TheStylisted. Then you nixed “the,” a move that can’t help but remind me of Facebook. What was the reasoning behind the name change?
LK: We could not afford stylisted.com as our domain when we started. We incorporated through LegalZoom in between fourth and fifth period. We were trying to make everything work when we were still students. Stylisted wasn’t available so we bought thestylisted.com. At the end of the day, it’s a nice descriptor for what we do, but it’s certainly not the easiest name to say, or scream at the bar … or to spell. We were finally able to buy the right domain name after two years.
JC: Where was the guy living that we bought it from?
LK: It’s not Mallorca … Malta.
JC: Yep, he made a killing. I wonder what it means in his language.
Are you still looking for investors?
LK: Yes, coast to coast. In 2016, we’re hoping to expand to five more cities. Now that the technology has evolved so much, it can do so much more and relieve us of the manual burden and position us for scale.
On Stylisted, women can see a photo, bio and reviews of any stylist before booking, creating a personal relationship that contrasts with the purely transactional nature of many mobile apps. How does this personal connection set you apart?
JC: That was a goal from the beginning. We never set out to be a mobile salon. The initial pain point that Lauren had was transparency in who you are hiring. Going to a makeup counter, sitting on any stool that’s open, getting pushed product, not liking how you looked. I think we’ve stuck by it when we could have shifted but we’ve always seen the real value in empowering these men and women to build their business.
On the client side, they love to pay with a credit card, and that’s done through the site. They’re trying to fill a narrow window of time since they’re getting ready for an event most of the time. And it’s a fun time to experiment. On the stylist side, we have actually seen stylists bring clients onto the network. We are taking away the administrative burden on these men and women. We provide customer service and step in for any sort of payment issues.
LK: Insurance protection, scheduling, all the things that creative professionals don’t always like to do. So they can show up to the appointment and just focus on the creative artistry that they’re trained in. They’re even choosing to involve us when they meet the client outside of Stylisted.
One valuable aspect of many mobile apps is the immense amount of data that you collect. What are some of the ways you are using this data?
LK: One of our goals is to become a true beauty authority. Parallel to the site we have a Stylisted blog. There’s a lot of value in sharing stylists’ favorite products and beauty tricks to establish us as a beauty authority. We’ve only just scratched the surface of that.
JC: There’s so much opportunity with what we’ve collected so far but we’re very focused on what we’re doing and doing it well so we aren’t trying to build out on all this stuff just yet. It’s really in the collection phase right now. Once we have the manpower, we’ll keep adding.
What do you wish you had known in June 2013, when you first started?
LK: Honestly, we were just talking about this the other day. I’m glad we did not know more because if I knew how difficult it would be I probably wouldn’t have done it.
JC: That’s a terrible answer!
LK: But it’s true. You just have to take things one at a time. If you have insight into what lies ahead, it’s kind of overwhelming. I’m glad I discovered all of these fun challenges as they came.
JC: For example, we just launched an add-on so stylists and customers can chat the day before. It has cut back on manual labor by dozens and dozens of hours. We probably should have added it sooner.
LK: Our tech guy always pushes us to quantify our problems. This one was hard, but now it’s so obvious.
How are Chicago women different or the same in their beauty needs compared with your other markets?
LK: I think for the most part, Chicago women really have fun with it. And they make the getting ready experience more of an event in itself. So they’ll invite their friends, get the champagne popping and put some music on. This is something that they let themselves enjoy. So a lot of times the appointment size is greater in Chicago than it is in New York.
JC: I think it’s also a very special event-focused market. It’s not so much a Monday morning blowout before a meeting, which is typical in New York. It’s more hair and makeup appointments together with friends or updos.
Are there any new beauty trends you’re projecting for 2016?
JC: Talking to Isabella, our style guru, and our stylists, we’re seeing lots of brushed-up brows and blue eyeshadow and eyeliner. For hair, twists and textured short hair are popular. Lobs are still going to be a thing, but wavy bobs will be big too!
Any tips for women looking to start their own business?
LK: I think the best advice is just to do it. It’s never going to be the perfect time. Every year it gets harder — you’re a year older, you have more excuses. You have to get used to going to market, whatever that looks like, with a far-from-done product. You have to get used to not being a perfectionist. When you’re aiming for perfection that’s delaying your entrepreneurial journey. You won’t know what perfect looks like until you’ve been at it a couple of months or even years and get that feedback from your clients. So just get going!
JC: Even if you aren’t in school or can’t quit your job, just dedicating those extra hours to starting something. I think that’s very therapeutic if you want to make the change and I highly encourage it.
LK: Don’t be too protective of an idea. Share it with as many people as you can to get feedback and supporters. If they can steal it that easily it wasn’t that great of an idea. A good business is all about execution and hopefully you as a team or individual bring something unique to the table. Right now we’re making less than we did at our jobs before business school, but we get to choose the people that we work with and we have built a fantastic team of people that we love to work with every day on a service we truly believe in.
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