The beauty industry has seen an explosion of offerings recently. Customers can now access treatments far beyond basic hair and nail care, from wrinkle-smoothing Botox and fillers to permanent laser hair removal and even weight management through GLP-1 medications.
Riding this wave of industry growth is Boulevard, a provider of scheduling and payment software for the self-care sector.
The nine-year-old Boulevard just raised $80 million in Series D funding, valuing the business at nearly $800 million, a meaningful uptick from the $595 million valuation it garnered three years ago. The round was led by growth equity firm JMI Equity and included participation from existing investors Index Ventures and VMG Partners.
When Boulevard launched in 2016, the company’s co-founders, Matt Danna and Sean Stavropoulos, wanted to solve what seemed like a simple problem: allowing people to book hairstyling visits online.
The duo couldn’t understand why salons still made clients call to make appointments. What they discovered was that salons were intentionally resistant to online scheduling: they were trying to optimize stylists’ time.
So, Boulevard built a machine learning-based booking system that considers various constraints, such as clients’ unique service needs and punctuality history.
The company initially sold their precision-scheduling software to hair salons, expanding to massage parlors and nail salons.
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Boulevard’s revenue soared over 500% in the last three years, partly driven by a burgeoning new client segment: MedSpas. These businesses, which are a hybrid between traditional day spas and medical clinics, provide non-surgical, minimally invasive procedures ranging from microneedling and Botox to prescribing GLP-1 medications like Ozempic for weight loss.
Danna, who serves as Boulevard’s CEO, said he was first surprised that medspa owners were interested in using the company’s software instead of electronic medical records systems (EMRs). He discovered that EMRs are better suited for clients billing insurance, whereas MedSpas predominantly run on a cash-pay model.
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