I reached out to Sahr Said, the CEO & Founder of the winning start-up to learn just that.
The big win at Lahore Startup Weekend created steam, which the team at Beauty Box is using to push forward while it’s still hot. Beauty Box recently secured a spot for incubation at the LUMS Center of Entrepreneurship. The team has decided to stay together and is currently working hard to get their beauty services marketplace launched.
The short term plan is to launch a platform as a community for beauty products & service users to share tips, reviews and suggestions. Based on the traction and customer data gathered, either an iOS or Android app for Beauty Box would follow. Search filters would allow users to filter beauty services by service, price, location, or peer ratings, while service providers will be given a dashboard to manage their own listings. Users will also be able to book services instantly right from the Beauty Box platform.
Sahr Said led the winning presentation at Startup Weekend in Lahore.
“We plan to follow an aggressive strategy that relies on a fast roll-out and quick expansion. Our goal is to connect our customers with the beauty services they need, anytime, anyplace, anywhere, and scale Beauty Box into a market leading online company.”
The idea shares similarities with Style Seat, in its approach towards creating value with customers. With the prevalence of female centric groups on social networks in Facebook around salons, spa’s and recreational matters, the biggest challenge will be replicating that trust and social network appeal on the Beauty Box site, as well as re-targeting users with contextual relevance. In the (paraphrased) words of Muhammad Nasrullah, one of the judges at Lahore Startup Weekend:
“It’s about execution, business modelling and customer development. Beauty Box did a great job on all three fronts.”
We’ll check back in a month and update you soon enough :)
