Data show that in 2015, my country's service industry grew by 8.3% year-on-year, 1.4 and 2.3 percentage points higher than the growth rates of GDP and secondary industry added value respectively, accounting for 50.5% of GDP, more than half for the first time. Compared with developed countries, my country's service industry still has 20%-30% room for development. The beauty industry belongs to the physical service industry, and the entire market has a scale of hundreds of billions. However, the degree of informatization is really low compared with the retail catering industry. The reason is that catering and retail have large customer flows and reach a wide range of people, while the beauty industry has relatively small customer flows. This, coupled with the quality of employees, results in low informatization and low management efficiency.
The current main management methods of Meiye are paper ledgers and simple cashier and settlement software. Paper management accounts for about 90% of industry customers, and stand-alone management software with simple functions that can only be used to manage membership cards accounts for about 9%. The stickiness between customers and stores in the beauty industry is relatively high. Although it is a low-frequency consumption, once a user chooses a store, it is difficult to switch to other stores after receiving better service. Therefore, the beauty industry has higher requirements for reservation management and customer management than catering and retail. The form of software used does not necessarily focus on settlement and cashiers. The focus is on management software that integrates CRM systems, cashiers, performance appraisals, and reservations.
36Kr recently learned about Menting Guandian, a beauty industry SaaS product whose main functions include SCRM membership management, smart reservations, performance pay, marketing coupons, all-round cashier, etc. On the customer side, Menting Guan Store's products are WeChat official accounts and mini programs; on the beautician side, it is a mobile terminal used for maintaining customer relationships, salary inquiries and reservations; on the front desk, it is Upad, which is mainly responsible for cashiering and making reservations; and there is also a general backend used by the store manager, which is mainly a PC or an integrated smartphone for overall data management.
In fact, the management process is also a process of accumulating data and developing a closed loop and ecology. CEO Meng Fanggang told reporters that Menting Management Store now uses marketing tools + SaaS systems to enter offline beauty industry stores and establish strong relationships. Then it embeds WeChat and Alipay payments through the cashier system, imports the store’s online flow into the platform to deposit a large amount of funds, and finally conducts big data analysis based on SaaS transaction data and consumer behavior data to extend the supply chain of beauty industry products and projects. For example, Menting Guandian is currently developing a Korean skin tester. After the test is completed, it will be placed in the customer's file and integrated into the intelligent management platform, so that when the customer comes back, they can provide services based on their personal characteristics.
The transformation of the beauty industry has formed two camps. One camp is large clubs, which have accumulated many old customers. Old customers have stronger and stronger demands for health care as they age. Once they get involved in health care, they are somewhat separated from the main Internet forces in their 80s and 90s; the other is newly opened stores in the past two years. Newly opened stores do not have the resources of old members, so how to provide services for people in their 80s and 90s has become the main task. Young people belong to the Internet usage scene, so it is easier for new stores to embed SaaS software. Menting Guan Store prefers younger stores, and will build old stores after accumulating experience and funds for a period of time.
For stores without informatization, the early data entry is the most troublesome. The Menting Management Store will send customer service to help organize the data, which takes about 2-3 days. The second is the popularization of software use. Regarding this, Menting Guandian has special training, including audio and video remote training. The charging model is divided into private cloud deployment and public cloud. The public cloud is no more than 10,000 yuan, and there will be an annual maintenance fee of 1,000 yuan thereafter. The installation of the entire software can probably save the store one person's cost.
The customers of Menting Guan Store include Christina, Silkland Hair Care, Qingxi Aesthetics, Millennium Bird, Natural Beauty, etc.
In terms of competitive products in the industry, beauty SaaS providers also include Boka, Ohthi, Meiyehui, Meilijia, Dianmei, Meiyebang, etc.
Meng Fanggang believes that one of the thresholds for building SaaS in the beauty industry is software R&D capabilities. Only with relatively strong R&D capabilities can we develop products with simple pages, complete functions, and suitable for management, and the stickiness between customers and the company will increase. Therefore, the idea of Menting Guandian is to make more intelligent products. The second point is sales ability. Menting Guandian now adopts a partnership method, and agency channels can develop its own customers. Currently, there are more than 100 Menting partners.
The team now has 30 people, more than half of whom are technicians. CEO Meng Fanggang has served as CEO of Huiyou Technology and CEO of Shuijie. He has 8 years of experience in Internet and mobile Internet operation and management. The company has completed angel round financing and plans to conduct the next round of financing.