LISA hopes to improve business for Chicago artists formerly
known as cosmetologists
Chicago Business Journal
Lewis Lazare
11 January 2016
LISA has arrived in Chicago. Launching today, LISA is a
beauty business app. Well, LISA is a person too. But for the purposes of this
story, LISA is an app that aims to make life more manageable for hundreds of
cosmetologists in the Chicago market. Except that in the world where LISA will
function, cosmetologists are now known as "artists."
LISA is the brainchild of founder and CEO Robert Richmond, a
former live theater actor and producer who left the arts to get into the
apartment-finding business via Chicago Apartment Finders in 2007. After rising
through the ranks, Richmond left Apartment Finders in 2014 to focus on
developing a new app for the beauty industry. Chicago Apartment Finders was
subsequently sold to Coldwell Banker.
Richmond's interest in the beauty biz came by way of his
wife Lisa Nation, herself a struggling beautician that Richmond wanted to help.
Noted the LISA CEO: "Artists need and deserve more control over what they
do and how they they do it. Our team has created a platform that enables
artists to better manage their business, make more money from their
extraordinary skills and gain more freedom and flexibility in their work."
The new beauty service app includes in its database artists
who specialize in hair, skin care, nail treatments and massage. Would-be
clients can scan LISA's list of beauty artists and organize an appointment with
one using a geo-specific locator and other advanced customization features
based on artist rating, price, location and availability. Services are
scheduled "on-demand" within as soon as an hour of a request or for a
future time and date. Payments are automatically charged to a credit card.
A spokeswoman for LISA said upwards of 2,700 beauty artists
have pre-registered for inclusion in the app's data bank. But due to the
background checks being performed on all artists, only about 150 were in the
system by today's launch.
LISA also comes with a built-in safety feature through a
partnership with Lifeline Response, a mobile security monitoring system that
allows clients or artists to alert authorities if they encounter an
uncomfortable situation.
Though it remains to be seen how many potential clients will
want to organize a haircut or pedicure in their office or home, LISA founder
Richmond thinks his new app could make life more pleasant and more profitable
for its artists, while providing a real convenience for clients.
And beauty artists could use the extra cash LISA may
generate for them.
Per the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of
2014, the U.S. beauty industry was composed of more than 1 million
professionals who earned a median annual wage of $23,120. In the typical beauty
salon structure, beauty artists typically keep only about 45 to 60 percent of
the fees salons charge. Because LISA takes only 20 percent of the fee a beauty
artist charges a client, the beauty app allows artists to retain more of what
they earn.
A spokeswoman for LISA said there are "dozens" of
investors in LISA, but the company is not yet ready to release a full list of
them or the amount of funding raised. LISA was developed separately from
Chicago tech incubator 1871, but shares office space with it.
Now LISA is focused only on the Chicago market. But, if all
goes well, it could expand to other markets within the next 18 months. The
downloadable LISA app works on both iOS and Android systems.
