Booksy – Major App in Eastbourne’s Heart

Booksy, an international health and beauty appointment software company, has recently raised over $70m in private and venture capital funding. Striving to become a household name from their UK headquarters in the centre of Eastbourne. Booksy has grown from a small start-up to a fully-fledged scale-up with year on year growth.

'We started with local, and we know how powerful loyal support is... We feel it is important that we are able to help create opportunities locally (in Eastbourne).'

Megan MackieBooksy UK

Booksy

Founded
2013
Location (UK)
Eastbourne
Sector
Digital

Booksy is an appointment booking service for companies within the health and beauty sector. Giving customers and businesses more flexible options, whether on their website or via a dedicated Booksy app, it combines a calendar, point of sale solutions, client database and lightweight marketing automation to help businesses grow.

‘Say if you are a barber, would you want your customer to wait outside on a particularly rainy day? If you are a customer, do you have to negotiate for ten minutes to get an appointment to see your hairdresser?’ Tomasz Odrobinski, UK country manager said. ‘Booksy solves this’.

Freedom of choice

“Our solutions give clients and customers booking flexibility,” Tomasz added. “Most appointments are booked outside of working hours, so using our app allows businesses to pick up missed revenue, and provides freedom for the customer. Booksy allows businesses to occupy the digital marketplace where their customers are, with integrated software into Google, Facebook and Instagram”.

Booksy allows users to save time and take their lives back rather than rely on old-fashioned booking systems. Looking over their statistics, Tomasz commented: “We found that companies had 30% more appointments whilst applying the Booksy system than before. Booksy allows customers 24/7 access to book, change and review services, whilst giving businesses time to focus on their clients and business.’

The Booksy Philosophy

Growing by word of mouth, Booksy gives companies confidence in managing their business. Booksy does not see its platform as an off-the-shelf solution, but an ongoing collaboration and building a virtual business community within real communities. Tomasz continued: “Booksy helps businesses loyalise the customer and gives everyone peace of mind, allowing people to live life fully. Booksy has had consistently high net promoter scores and referrals, and this year has been our best year yet”.

“Booksy has always been about the local support”, Megan Mackie, Booksy UK Marketing Manager said, “and we invest in our companies and in the communities that we operate. Starting with four employees in Eastbourne, we have grown to twenty-seven and counting, and many more in places like Sheffield and Leeds. We started with local, and we know how powerful loyal support is, with health and beauty companies in Eastbourne being our first advocates! We feel it is important that we are able to help locally and create opportunities”.

“You don’t have to be a start-up to be growing in places like London or Brighton. we were able to scale-up in Eastbourne.”

“Our growth proves you don’t have to be in a grey skyscraper when you could be a short walk to the beach,” Tomasz said, “and it helps to have such a great team.”

Booksy, Tech, Eastbourne
Tech, Eastbourne
The Team, Tech, Eastbourne
Booksy, Tech, Eastbourne

Booksy Growing in 2020

The Booksy UK team is tight-knit, loyal, easy-going and always on hand to help their clients and customers. For Booksy, the product is only as good as understanding the customers and clients, developing strong relationships.

When Covid-19 lockdowns happened, the health and beauty industry was facing an incredibly uncertain future, but Booksy was reactive and switched tactics, working actively to help its customers by creating e-books to guide them through closing and reopening, adding informative articles to its blog and has now started to develop a new e-learning service.

“Booksy is not just appointments, it’s a client management system, and it was only right that we were supportive of our customers”, Megan said. “Some treatments and services can’t be done virtually, but we worked on solutions that allow businesses to host and facilitate digital appointments with Zoom integration, as well as offering advanced booking options and even a virtual tip jar.”

“It is incredible to see that Booksy played a part in helping businesses find strong local support, who wanted to support and buy local.”

“Booksy is a community that puts people first, and allows businesses to shoot for the moon.”. Booksy has now started a regular ‘The Better Business’ podcast with true life stories from the businesses it works with.

When lockdown restrictions lifted mid-2020, demand for Booksy’s services skyrocketed, as Booksy was allowing businesses to manage their spaces not just in giving time back but allowing businesses to manage overcrowding and ensure safety for customers. Tomasz continued: “We initially put a number of our employees on furlough, but as demand grew, we were able to get our staff back in, and hire a lot more people to help with the demand. Our app was featured in the top three downloaded apps in the UK on the app store when salons were starting to open up!”.

Continued innovation

After securing $70m in funding, they are expanding across the UK and their other markets. Locate East Sussex has supporting Booksy in its expansion, helping the company to investigate the best way to scale up its operations and Eastbourne base. Continually growing, Booksy is also actively recruiting new staff to work on the team and with over 50 employees across the UK now helping more businesses unlock their ability to grow. Booksy is always innovating and currently investigating other sectors for its booking solutions.

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