Beauty is probably the only thing that every woman thinks of everyday. Asian women are always the big fans of beauty services in the world. And in Southeast Asia, Thailand is the well-known country of women’s passion for beauty. That is the reason Alexey chose Thailand as the starting point for his beauty review and booking startup Bookup.Asia. Launched its first version in March 2014, now Bookup.Asia has an enormous database with more than 6500 beauty shops, beauty clinics and dental clinics in the system database. Hundreds of shop owners and staffs are using the CRM system on a daily basis.
From Asian beauty demand
Targeting on locals, expats, tourists and all beauty and health lovers living or coming to SE Asia as well. Thailand is in Top 10 destinations for beauty services. In 2013 almost half are international “beauty” tourist arrivals. That is why Bookup.asia is multi currency and multilingual. Having a clear customer set at the beginning helped Bookup to prepare well for the platform. Their main categories are Spa, Medical beauty, Cosmetic Surgery, Hair & Nail and Dentals.
Bookup is probably one of the very few startups in Asia focusing on both shops and end-users from the very beginning. Customers also get a quick access to all market offers and find the nearest location, detail descriptions, prices comparison and promotion updates. In the Customer module customers keep all their treatments history and are alerted on the next booking. They don’t have to pay in advance and can call either directly to the shop for more information or Bookup call centre.
Currently the end-users know about their website via the first two channels Google and Social Media, especially Facebookin Thailand. Bookup also does some offline promotions as well like taking part in big Beauty events in Thailand. They also run regular campaigns to attract customers for example “Cash back” for two bookings etc.
According to Elena Strebkova, Sales & Marketing Director of Bookup.Asia, their system helps users at some main points:
- Customer module. It shows all user’s bookings, favourite shops, reviews. You can easily track when you last had your hair coloured, dental check up, and filler procedure so you know exactly when to go for the next one.
- Beauty Points. Making bookings online customers collect beauty points, which later they can use for a FREE service or get a nice prize.
- For many expats and tourists it is not easy to talk by phone and understand clearly all information. Booking online is plain, fair and saves time.
- Using bookup.asia you get to know much more. (For example Paul has lived at Silom area for over 4 years and didn’t know that right round the corner there is a hair shop which completely meets his style and price expectations. He only learnt it from Bookup.asia;-))
To a CRM for local shop owners in Southeast Asia
Although offers many helpful features for the end-users, the way Bookup makes money is mainly relied on the B2B side which charge the shop owners. That is why they focus not only on building a booking and review system but also implementing a good CRM system. Elena shares about this strategy.
- The basic CRM features are FREE. But the full featured package and package for multi-branch shop costs reasonable fees.
- Promotion packages for shop like banners, top listing and others.
- Commission from bookings in such industries like Plastic Surgery and Dental.
But it is not all about money. We never charge commission for offers cost less than 1000THB. Shop owners can register FREE and use the basic features being able to place full information about their shop at bookup.asia.
All bookings for users are FREE. The commission is included into the shop price and makes no difference for the user.
A lot of small local businesses are still offline and only count at their location. From Bookup stats, out of 2500 shops there were 900 which didn’t have websites or FB pages. So Bookup tries to offer one more benefit by providing 600 shops with a mini website and help them out with online price lists free of charge.
And prepare for the next steps
- Product development and market expansion are the two most challenging tasks for Bookup right now. T
he main beauty and medical service booking web site is currently deployed to Thailand. The next step is to educate Thais to review, book and follow their favorite shops and beauty professionals. - Bookup team is preparing to expand to other countries (MY, SG, KH). Secured an angel investment of US$ 300 000 in 2013, now they’re raising series A to rapidly gain more market share from Japan, Korea and Singapore for medical surgery service and also recruit more beauty, dental and clinics shops in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore to increase the inventory. The fact that Asia #1 by number of plastic surgeons and procedures and a huge market of more than 600M customers in Southeast Asia could help to draw an interesting picture for this market.
he main beauty and medical service booking web site is currently deployed to Thailand. The next step is to educate Thais to review, book and follow their favorite shops and beauty professionals.
Latest news: Bookup has launched its iOS app “Dental and Beauty Emergency Locator” on July 17 with the name DABEL. Dabel is a service of emergency care for the daily misfortunes. It helps users quickly handle various failures like broken nail, pain in the neck or toothache. As the user chooses the problem and clicks HELP the app shows the nearest location on the map and the phone # for an immediate contact.
The clinics and shops signed in for the service don’t need the users booking and are ready to receive customers with their urgent issues: https://itunes.apple.com/ru/app/dental-beauty-emergency-locator/id897407439?l=en&mt=8