London-based founder of the world-renowned salon WAH Nails, Sharmadean Reid, knows everything nails, tech and girls. She’s the best friend we all want while simultaneously being an incredible role model.
WAH Nails has over 470,000 Instagram followers, including Jorja Smith and Serena Williams, and for a very, very good reason — nails that slay for days! While Reid’s work isn’t finished with WAH Nails, she’s currently developing her second business — Beautystack, a kind of Instagram made exclusively for beauty geeks.
Beautystack will combine the world of experts and fans by allowing professionals to showcase their work on personalized pages and customers to book treatments with the simple click of an image.
"There is no social-visual booking system right now in the world. WAH is cool, and I didn’t want to defile its coolness by using old-school software," Reid said in an interview with Forbes.
Beautystack, a photo-first beauty platform, has already been backed by European investors. Reid stated that the success of winning investors over has a lot to do with her insights into the unmet issues of the beauty market. For instance: We’re all guilty of taking a screenshot of something on Pinterest or Instagram and bringing it to a beautician with the hope that they can make the picture-perfect look happen. Now Reid wants to make that process easier between customer and beauty professional.
"At the same time, some of the best independent beauticians lack a smart booking system to manage their hundreds of customers, often relying on WhatsApp or DMs to talk to clients," said Reid. Beautystack will solve this problem while also allowing beauticians to build their own brands and portfolios.
The app is already being tested by 100 carefully-chosen professionals. Reid will use her funding to develop a mobile app, which is set to launch this summer in Los Angeles and London. With 700 professionals, including Lord Gavin McLeod-Valentine, a celebrity facialist, and Chanice Sienne, a brow expert, on the Beautystack waiting list, the app seems promising. Reid plans to keep the access to Beautystack free, but there might be a small transaction fee on sales.
The app might just be the perfect marriage for beauty professionals and those who want to access their services in an Instagram-worthy way. I mean, it can't get much easier than if all we have to do is click on a pretty picture of nail art and, BOOM!, we're booked for an appointment with someone who can make it happen. And as for Reid, she's sure that the app will be just as influential as its predecessor.
"Everyone keeps talking about influencers," she said, "but the next wave of influencers in beauty will come from highly influential beauty professionals."