Fresha, the world’s top beauty and wellness booking platform, announced today their acquisition of Bookwell, an Australian online booking marketplace for salons and spas.
The deal follows a recent $150 million Series C investment in Fresha led by leading private equity firm General Atlantic.
The acquisition of Bookwell marks a new phase in London based Fresha’s continued growth story. It adds to the platform’s extensive base of over 60,000 partner salons and spas primarily spanning the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and also Europe. Bookwell was founded in 2017 by EatNow founders Matt Dyer and Nathan Airey; it has signed up over 5K salons in Australia. Following their first start-up success, Bookwell was set up as a matchmaking engine for Australian beauty and wellness service providers. The objective was to fill empty appointment slots with customers in their area.
“From my first meeting with William, Fresha’s founder and CEO, I believed in his vision, energy and passion. By helping beauty and wellness businesses grow sales with tools to facilitate online payments, self-service bookings as well as automated marketing, Fresha provides the perfect opportunity to enhance Bookwell’s offering,” says Matt Dyer, Founder and CEO of Bookwell. “It’s great to be joining forces with Fresha, the global leader in the beauty and wellness industry.”
Easy-to-use, subscription-free software
Fresha’s free appointment scheduling software platform is across 120 countries globally. It sees tens of millions of appointments booked each month, and nearly $15 billion in value of appointments bookings processed to date. Fresha’s focus is on building easy-to-use, subscription-free salon software also underpinned by a strong word-of-mouth effect. This has helped the company build a loyal customer base. Fresha’s partner businesses rely on the platform for its ease of use, time-saving benefits, and embedded features to grow their sales, with end users also enjoying a premium booking and payment experience.
“Bookwell’s progress in Australia is commendable. The team has built a strong business model helping salons and therapists save thousands each year on marketing to fill empty appointments” says Founder and CEO William Zeqiri. “There is a natural synergy with Fresha’s own online marketplace and Bookwell’s partner base; it now has the opportunity to benefit from our market leading software. This includes our dedicated payments system as well as marketing tools, all accessed under one roof. Together we are helping our partners make more money, save time and also receive payment more easily.”
About Fresha
Fresha is a leading global beauty and wellness platform. Each month, tens of millions of appointments are discovered, booked and paid with partner salons, spas and barbershops on Fresha. Approximately 60,000 partner venues in over 120 countries use the platform. They manage their operations through Fresha’s intuitive, full-spectrum and also subscription-free business software. As the industry’s best appointment scheduling software Fresha transforms beauty and wellness business operations. It does this by enabling the acceptance of online appointment bookings, processing of card payments and also managing customer records, along with automations for marketing, staffing, product inventory and accounting, all in one place. Launched in 2015 originally under the name Shedul, the company rebranded to Fresha in 2020. For more information, visit www.fresha.com. Download Fresha on the App Store and Google Play or follow Fresha on Facebook and Instagram.
About Bookwell
Bookwell is an Australian platform for venues in the beauty, health, and wellness industry, enabling them to grow their business, save time, as well as spending less money. Bookwell provides salon software for venues to manage their business and an online marketplace where customers can book their appointments in an instant. 80,000+ Australians access the marketplace bookwell.com.au every week to book from over 700 venue partners.
Bookwell founders Matthew Dyer and Nathan Airey set up the business in 2017. Backed by Gabby and Hezi Leibovich, founders of catch.com.au and Adam Schwab and Jeremy Same founders of luxuryescapes.com.
About General Atlantic General Atlantic is a global growth equity firm providing capital as well as strategic support to companies. Established in 1980, General Atlantic combines a collaborative global approach, sector specific expertise, a long-term investment horizon, as well as a deep understanding of growth drivers to partner with great entrepreneurs and management teams to build market-leading businesses worldwide. General Atlantic has more than 175 investment professionals based in New York, Amsterdam, Beijing, Greenwich, Hong Kong, Jakarta, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, Munich, Palo Alto, São Paulo, Shanghai, and Singapore. For more information on General Atlantic, please visit the website: www.generalatlantic.com