Boulevard raises $80M to energy self-care increase pushed by Botox and GLP-1 surge

The wonder business has seen an explosion of choices lately. Prospects can now entry remedies far past fundamental hair and nail care, from wrinkle-smoothing Botox and fillers to everlasting laser hair elimination and even weight administration by GLP-1 medicines.

Using this wave of business development is Boulevard, a supplier of scheduling and fee software program for the self-care sector.

The nine-year-old Boulevard simply raised $80 million in Sequence D funding, valuing the enterprise at practically $800 million, a significant uptick from the $595 million valuation it garnered three years in the past. The spherical was led by development fairness agency JMI Fairness and included participation from present buyers Index Ventures and VMG Companions.

When Boulevard launched in 2016, the corporate’s co-founders, Matt Danna and Sean Stavropoulos, needed to unravel what appeared like a easy drawback: permitting folks to e book hairstyling visits on-line.

The duo couldn’t perceive why salons nonetheless made purchasers name to make appointments. What they found was that salons had been deliberately immune to on-line scheduling: they had been attempting to optimize stylists’ time. 

So, Boulevard constructed a machine learning-based reserving system that considers numerous constraints, akin to purchasers’ distinctive service wants and punctuality historical past.

The corporate initially bought their precision-scheduling software program to hair salons, increasing to therapeutic massage parlors and nail salons.

Boulevard’s income soared over 500% within the final three years, partly pushed by a burgeoning new shopper phase: MedSpas. These companies, that are a hybrid between conventional day spas and medical clinics, present non-surgical, minimally invasive procedures starting from microneedling and Botox to prescribing GLP-1 medicines like Ozempic for weight reduction.

Danna, who serves as Boulevard’s CEO, stated he was first shocked that medspa house owners had been keen on utilizing the corporate’s software program as an alternative of digital medical data methods (EMRs). He found that EMRs are higher fitted to purchasers billing insurance coverage, whereas MedSpas predominantly run on a cash-pay mannequin.

Adapting Boulevard’s software program to serve MedSpas was fairly easy, Danna stated. The corporate grew to become HIPAA compliant and built-in MedSpa-specific options, together with visible charts for exact Botox and filler injection mapping.

Three years after introducing these options, Boulevard estimates that it’s powering roughly 15% of all MedSpas within the U.S.

“I’m actually impressed by how magnificence and medical providers traces are blurring,” Danna stated. “We now have hair salons that provide MedSpa providers.”

Over time, Boulevard expanded its choices to incorporate a web based fee system, a enterprise providing that the corporate unexpectedly stumbled upon. “We ended up studying that in the event you make it straightforward to e book on-line, it’s straightforward to not present up for an appointment,” Danna stated. “So, we began capturing bank card to carry appointments, and that solved the issue of no-shows.”

Although Boulevard initially had no intention of charging these bank cards, prospects requested the corporate use the info for transactions. Boulevard now estimates it’s going to course of roughly $5 billion in funds this yr.

After all, Boulevard has loads of competitors, together with Zenoti, which was final valued at $1 billion in 2020, Fresha, Booksy, and lots of others.