Glambook, a SaaS beauty platform for self-employed professionals and their clients, has completed its seed round of investments, raising $2.5 million from venture capital angels. The company now has an estimated value of $12 million. The investment will enable the broadening of the user base, improving AI-enabled matching technology, and the establishment of beauty co-working spaces.

During the first phase, pilot beauty co-working spaces will open in London, allowing independent professionals to reduce the cost of renting a workplace. In addition, more than $100,000 will go to support Ukrainian beauty professionals forced to leave their country because refugees will be able to use the platform free of charge.

"Professionals from Ukraine are some of the best in beauty services. We want to support them in finding new jobs in the beauty industry in the EU and UK, so they can work for themselves and increase their income by providing services they are good at," notes Anastasia Tomchenko, co-founder of Glambook

Glambook brings together over 20,000 freelance professionals from London, Berlin, Paris, Milan, and 50 other major European cities. The service allows beauty professionals to work in a flexible environment, i.e., choose where and how to provide their services, whether at home, in a client's place, in the co-working space, or the salon. Today, the platform has over 100,000 bookings and is growing 2x month-over-month. Glambook distributes its CRM solution only to beauty professionals without attracting clients and does not follow the traditional marketplace model.

"A new generation of consumers view beauty brands as entities they can access through a variety of points of intersection, including physical and digital. They expect the same quality of service in-store, on the website, and on social media, so Glambook becomes a bridge between beauty makers and customers," says Alex Tomchenko, CEO of Glambook.

The platform has a first-of-its-kind AI matching engine that matches clients with beauty professionals based on their visual references. Glambook works in a promising market niche to support freelancers and promote people who want to work for themselves at the lowest possible overhead. Last year, the startup raised €500,000 from a group of entrepreneurs.

According to the British Beauty Council, the industry generates more than 6 billion pounds sterling for the U.K. economy annually. In 2021, the amount spent on hair and personal care salons in the UK reached 8.6 billion pounds.