e27 had a conversation with the co-founder of GoWabi, Samir Cherro, about how beauty and health industry can be adjusted to market needs

When it comes to concept, GoWabi certainly does not offer a new approach to online beauty and health service. But when it comes to expertise, GoWabi has got it covered.

“It’s about value that we offer to both the merchants and the customers. Our platform lets customers get the best deals from spa, salon, and even dental clinics around Thailand, and we give our merchants assistance to determine the deals that customers actually want,” said Samir Cherro, the company’s co-founder.

GoWabi brands itself as a one-stop destination for beauty needs, that will discover and book beauty and wellness services around the user.

GoWabi works by letting customers easily search for service by location and category, compare prices depending on the booking hour, read reviews and ratings by other customers, and receive cashbacks after each booking made on the platform

Personal pain

Cherro admitted that he sort of stumbled into the whole thing with GoWabi. “I was looking for barbers around me when I lived in Singapore, Jakarta, Manila, but with no luck. It was so difficult finding quality hairdressers at reasonable prices,” Cherro recalled.

From a mere idea, Cherro and other co-founders then launched the first platform that made salons, specifically barber services, available for people to book and make reservation. “From there, we saw a bigger problem and decided to expand. Two years ago we launched, and we moved more into beauty and spa service, and we were no longer niched only for barber service,” said Cherro.

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The co-founders later realized that, after Groupon and Ensogo shut down in Southeast Asia, there was an opportunity to fulfill the need of merchants who want to get more customers.

“We combined the two aspects and found the balance of providing ‘smarter discounts’ where we introduced offpeak pricing. That way customers can still enjoy discounts and merchants would get more customers filling their empty capacity, while receiving full prices on peak hours,” said Cherro

With the co-founders’ background at Ensogo and Lazada, the approach would be a sensible one to make.

Thailand is the beauty hub

Not only an attraction because of its white sandy beaches and international-famed gastronomy, Cherro reminded us why Thailand is an irresistible destination for tourists. “It’s where all the beauty and health sources are based in Southeast Asia, especially with spa and massage,” said Cherro.

It’s also one of the reasons why GoWabi is based in Thailand, because tourists actually came to Thailand for its spa treatment. “We have tourists from around the world coming to our platform and using our application to get deals on spa. Our inbound customers are the overseas tourists flocking to the country,” said Cherro.

Controls on customers

GoWabi’s customers are able to select date and time based on the real-time availability and pay online or cash using credit card, Alipay, or installment options.

GoWabi’s customers also can buy deals from e-commerces in Thailand such as Lazada or Shopee.

After that, once the booking and payment process is done, the customers can go to the shop and simply show their reservation email. The service provider will already have the booking information in their system.

By giving customers controls over when, where, and what treatment they can choose, GoWabi is able to curate a variety of promotions to offer its customers.

“It depends on certain hours when customers may get, for example, 30 per cent discount during lunch hours, and at peak hours, they must pay full price. It really plays on the various offers that customers can look into and choose from,” said Cherro.

So in this sense, their merchants also reap the benefits of giving only valuable things that customers are going to want to redeem.

“We try to find balance between discounts and capacity management” said Cherro, “From day one, we focused on providing value for our merchants, understanding their pain points and how we can help their business grow, to later be able to provide value to our users. In that way we have managed to keep our merchants on our platform (and keep them happy) rather than them seeing us as a quick customer acquisition channel for short time.”

“We offer a way for merchants to market their service in affordable ways and to ensure the message is delivered to the users. In the end everyone wants customers, and everyone is able to give discounts, we only need to be smarter in giving out discounts,” Cherro added.

Every booking made using GoWabi also will be rewarded with cashback to keep the customers engaged and coming back on using its service.

“Cashbacks that the customers collect can be redeemed for cash discount on any other 1,000 partners on our platform,” said Cherro.

On bringing expertises on board

When asked what differentiates GoWabi from other platforms offering similar services, Cherro began sharing about his and his co-founders collective background in the industry, especially in online marketplaces and e-commerce.

“Our team has strong background from various ecommerce and marketplace verticals in SEA, my co-founders previously worked at Ensogo Singapore and Zalora Thailand, I started early on in Lazada Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. I strongly believe our background and expertise in this industry has helped us bring GoWabi to where it is today,” said Cherro.

GoWabi announced their recent round of investment. In total they have managed to raised seven digits in USD. Their investors include Kasper Kragelund, 500 Tuktuks, and dtac, as claimed by Cherro.

“We believe this has made us the highest invested startup in beauty and salon booking space origined from SEA,” Cherro added, while highlighting their monthly growth.

In the upcoming quarters, just after securing the funding GoWabi has shared with us, the company plans to add more categories and to replicate the business model in new markets. “We want to improve our products for our merchants, basically providing a them more values and benefits by using our platform,” said Cherro.

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To date, GoWabi has expanded its footprint to nine major cities in Thailand and is now working with more than 1,000 beauty and wellness salons and boutiques, including internationally known brands and hotels such as: Benefit Cosmetics, Yves Rocher, Anastasia Beverly Hills, and Shangri-la.
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Image Credit: GoWabi

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