EatNow co-founders raise $2.6 million to launch beauty booking site Bookwell after a year in beta mode

In the world of lifestyle services, beauty customers have a laser-precise idea of what they want.

This is a fact the co-founders of food delivery platform EatNow, Matt Dyer and Nathan Airey, learned quickly when building their newest venture, online beauty and wellness booking platform Bookwell.

“We’re actually finding in general is quite different to food, and one way it’s different is that people have a better relationship with the provider,” Dyer tells SmartCompany, observing that once a customer finds a vendor that works, they stick with them.

The startup has been in beta mode since 2016, with the pair wanting to take the time to set up the website and test the market before formally launching this month.

Bookwell will initially be available in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, offering beauty and wellness businesses a digital platform to take customer bookings, in a similar way to how Menulog connects customers with local food outlets.

The business has received the green light from investors, having raised $2.6 million in funding in a round led by Lux Group co-founder and chief executive Adam Schwab and a range of other private investors. Dyer says Schwab, who was an investor in EatNow and has known the duo for years, wanted to “see the pilot” of Bookwell before investing in the business. Read more

Emma Koehn - Smart Company - 26 Sept 2017