Salonkee, the Luxembourg-based online booking platform and management tool for hair, beauty and wellness appointments, is set to take Europe by storm after securing Series A from international investors. This latest round of investment makes it one of Luxembourg’s most internationally funded startups to-date.
In addition to retaining funding from existing Luxembourgish seed investors including Expon Capital and the Luxembourg Business Angel Network (LBAN), a number of international investors have participated in this round of funding, supporting Salonkee’s ambitions for European growth. These new investors include Fortino Capital from Belgium, Newion from the Netherlands, Verve from Switzerland and some experienced business angels from Germany.
Mathijs de Wit, Partner at Newion shared their excitement around the startup, explaining “Our experience investing in B2B SaaS companies allowed us to quickly recognize Salonkee’s great potential, considering its traction and fast growth in the past few years, whereby it has become the solution of choice for hair, beauty & wellness salons across Luxembourg, Belgium and Switzerland.”
“Salonkee’s goal is to […] empower salon owners all across Europe to better manage and grow their businesses.”
Tom Michels
Ambitious growth plans
Salonkee currently has a strong presence in Luxembourg and Belgium. No matter where you are located in these countries, the closest salon on Salonkee will be no more than 15 minutes away, with many even less than 5 minutes away.
Since the company was launched in 2017 by the 5 Luxembourg-bases co-founders, Salonkee has managed more than 5 million appointments across over 1200 salons. With this latest round of investment, the company is looking to widen their presence across Europe. Their ambition is to grow to over 10,000 partner salons across Europe over the next two years.
According to co-founder and CEO, Tom Michels, Salonkee’s goal is “to lead the transition away from outdated methods towards market specific, easy to use, all-in-one salon management solutions and empower salon owners all across Europe to better manage and grow their businesses.” To support these growth plans, Salonkee is expanding its current team of 25 to over 100 people across all departments.
And their opportunity for growth in the long term is big. There are more than 800,000 salons across the continent, many still using outdated methods of pen and paper to manage their bookings. According to Filip Van Innis, Investment Director at Fortino Capital, they are “confident that the timing is right for Salonkee to digitalise salons with its end-to-end value proposition.” As digitalisation within this sector begins to grow, as it has done in the hospitality and healthcare sectors, there is plenty of potential to strengthen their position in this market.
