Today we’d like to introduce you to George Powell.
George, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
The idea of Easy Beauty was sparked out of my gift of problem-solving, my passion for helping people and my deep desire to provide advanced solutions. At the time of its inception, I was working in a corporate role as a solutions architect; paid well, yet unfulfilled. I prayed for the revelation of a greater purpose and the idea of Easy Beauty was born!
I’m perpetually asked the question, “Why the professional beauty industry?” I grew up around beauty and barber shops. I have family members and friends that work in the trade. To further vet the idea I inquired; “Would you want something like this? How would you want it to work? How would you want it to look?” After a year of questions, market research, prototypes and attending beauty shows; the first version of EB was brought from idea to fruition.
We launched the BETA version of the software in 2015 and invited beauty professionals to test it. After a few months of user testing, version two was born and launched in February 2016. We attended the largest African American beauty show (Bronner Brothers); where we were accompanied by our Global Ambassador Johnny Wright, hairstylist of Michelle Obama. It was a huge day for the brand. Our booth was well attended by celebrity stylists; including those of Kerry Washington and Beyonce.
Because our brand is so disruptive to the industry, we initially received pushback from industry leaders believing that it wasn’t the direction the industry is going. To the contrary, I kept moving forward. I truly believe in the impact technology can provide to the industry. Fast forward to today, we now have over 3,000 beauty professionals on our platform. Further, beauty brands are also seeing our value. Currently, we are in the process of inking our largest brand, Luster Products.
To date, we’ve been featured in the Huffington Post, Rolling Out Magazine and Hype Hair Magazine. Although we have traction, we’re still faced with challenges of aligning ourselves with our current opportunities and securing our first round of investment. We have a bright future ahead of us and we’re very excited to see how that looks!
We still face some challenges as we continue to grow our brand and services but the challenges we’re facing now aren’t centered around proving our model, they’re centered around aligning ourselves with the opportunities we have in front of us and raising our first round of investment capital (we’re still in bootstrap mode). With that being said, we have to remain resourceful and agile to keep moving the brand forward.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has not been a smooth road at all. Here are some of the challenges we are facing:
– Obtaining capital to survive the journey. We’re still funding ourselves (bootstrapping), so we have to be creative and nimble enough to make the necessary changes to keep us afloat until we receive our first round of funding.
– Market awareness. How do we sell a service no one knows exists, often for problems they don’t know they have? Brands are used to distributors and sales reps buying their products, then selling them to the customer. This model is slowly dimensioning but until recently, brands didn’t know this problem existed. It’s like trying to sell email before anyone had the internet.
– Market validation. How do you prove how good something is when there’s nothing to compare it to? Professional brands have no experience using technology to sell products. When there are no previous examples, it’s hard to demonstrate results. Our early clients are not customers, they are early adapters that must understand that the solution is a work in progress that will only get better with their input. Or to put it another way, we have to find the potential customers that believe there is a better way.
– Pinpointing fair market value. When you are the first company to offer something new, you have to decide what it’s worth? If your product is too expensive, it will be impossible to sell. If it’s undervalued, we may wither in the financial valley of death. Finding a cost people are willing to risk on an untested product while keeping your company alive is one of our biggest challenges.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Easy Beauty – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Easy Beauty, is a cloud-based digital sales and fulfillment management platform that opens a 24 / 7 / 365 mobile channel; connecting professional beauty brands with independent beauty professionals and their clients. Beauty professionals can purchase products, manage appointments (coming 2018) and back-office task at a time and place that’s convenient for them. Easy Beauty removes the friction that brands face trying to reach the independent Millennial and Centennial beauty professional and their clients.
Our service is a new way of thinking about professional product sales and fulfillment for beauty brands that want to reach independent beauty professional and their clients. Our solution opens a secure mobile channel that reaches the professional and their clients in a place and time that’s convenient for them.
We’re most proud of still being in business after 2 years. What sets us apart is our passion and love for the culture of professional beauty. We look at this culture through the lens of the beauty professional. We want to provide a service that assists them in building their businesses and keeping the professional integrity of this industry in place. If our customers win, we win and the industry as a whole wins.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Our plans for the future is building out the service to be a 360 solution for our brands and beauty professionals. Big changes coming 2018!
Contact Info:
- Address: 11 E. Illinois
Chicago, IL 60611 - Website: www.easybeautypro.com
- Phone: 866-803-7460
- Email: getsocial@easybeautypro.com
- Instagram: easybeautypro
- Facebook: easybeautypro
- Twitter: easybeautypro
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