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Salon application Mangomint raises $13M in the post-COVID labour shortage, driving its growth

Have you ever scheduled a massage over the phone and required to read your credit card number? It’s an unnecessary hassle that makes you question the safety of sharing your information with a complete stranger. Mangomint, located in Los Angeles, has developed a software as a service (SaaS) platform specifically for the beauty sector, which encompasses everything from salons and spas to piercing and tattoo parlours.

The increase in Mangomint’s clientele during the pandemic has allowed the company to reach a new monthly appointment milestone of over 200,000 at more than 1,000 sites in North America. OpenView Venture Partners, a Boston-based VC company renowned for funding firms powered by “product-led growth,” led the $13 million Series A round, which was supported by startup300 and existing angels.

The post-COVID labour shortage throughout developed nations has coincided with Mangomint’s rapid expansion in recent years. Restaurants and hair salons, which rely heavily on their employees being physically present at work, have had a hard time keeping employees since so many have left for reasons such COVID illness, greater pay, and more flexible schedules.

Mangomint CEO and co-founder Daniel Lang recently said to TechCrunch, “Cost [of labour] is up and supply is down because people simply leave.” We’re using intelligent robots to go into these fields.

After selling his software development firm in 2016, Austrian founder Lang set off on a cross-country road journey that would eventually give rise to Mangomint. It seemed like wherever we went in the United States, there were beauty parlours. Lang noted, “We ended up arranging a lot of appointments, but we always had to phone to book.

As Lang put it, the current version of Mangomint is “an OS for salons and spas” that streamlines processes like appointment scheduling, cash register transactions, staff payroll, and customer relationship management. According to Lang, the goal isn’t to replace people but to make them more efficient, a goal shared by many forms of workplace automation software and an approachable message that sidesteps the fear mongering of “robots coming for human jobs.”

Lang further clarified, “At Mangomint, you will never see the name AI since we think online booking is the only method.”

This is due to the fact that robots still lack the capabilities necessary to fully replace humans in many industries. Many consumers, for instance, prefer to discuss their treatment options with a salon specialist over the phone, thus Mangomint does not automate that element of the encounter. When the conversation is over, the programme will send a text message to the consumer, who will then click on a booking link and enter their payment card information (which will be pre-filled if the customer has already saved it on their phone).

One way in which Mangomint helps companies save money is by eliminating some of the most tedious tasks on their plates, as proposed by Lang. The “ugly fact” is that much of this sort of software is essentially tools that replace spreadsheets, although many vertical SaaS vendors tend to overpromise and claim to assist raise profits.

When asked why spa and salon appointments can’t be scheduled via a central booking platform like OpenTable, Lang said, “There is a cemetery of companies that aspire to be the Opentable for the beauty sector.”

Asking, “Why would I go via this site that charges me money if I already have a reliable salon expert?” Lang posed this question. Instead, Mangomint opts to be unobtrusive. Appointments may be scheduled without users having to sign up for a Mangomint account. Furthermore, the company’s goal is to make its software “invisible” by making it an integral part of the routine of small firms, so that they never notice it.