UNEEQ Salon Software is a cloud based, simple tool designed to optimize your business and improve customer experience. It is a proposed virtual web-based service provider that intends to fill the missing value chain.
For the salon owners it is able to manage your customer data, schedule appointments, branch management, manage inventory, staff payroll, generate financial reports such as profit and loss/daily sales reports , generate receipts and so much more. Technicians can upload their styles and keep data of their customers while customers can book appointments.
The idea behind Uneeq Salon Software started about 3 years ago with a friend of mine who also happens to be my partner. We frequent the salon quite often and noticed processes were still very manual, despite majority of Kenyans having embraced technology. This ranged from booking of appointments all the way to the book keeping and issuing of receipts. I travel a lot and one of the things I noticed was how effectively salons out there were running their operations. Kenya was ready to embrace this type of technology and in every opportunity one has to seize the moment.
We took the time to do extensive research on ground and found only one Software Company in Kenya providing such a service. Other tech companies were working on developing software for the same but none was as engaging as I hoped they would be.
Early last year, seeing how well the beauty and wellness industries were doing and all the numerous salons coming up, I felt it was the right time to finally explore the idea of having a salon software in Kenya catering to both the high end market as well as technicians. It took quite a bit of time to find the right team to develop the software but finally we settled on working with a team of experts from India. The decision to work with them was based on the fact that they had experience in terms of development and understanding our process flow as well as timely delivery in each stage of the project. We began our development last year February of phase 1 which is our salon owner panel that lead to the successful launch of UNEEQ Salon Software in August same year.
Why I chose the name Uneeq is because it describes exactly what we offer. Memorable and outstanding experience for our customers.
We have worked with several salon owners, customers and technicians to understand the market gap and pride ourselves in providing a unique customized experience. From our findings we realized that salon owners are still doing things manually hence making marketing campaigns ineffective. While technicians do not have full visibility of their monthly transactions. UNEEQ aims to create visibility for both users. We have ensured the software is designed specifically to meet the needs of the Kenyan market as well as international standards.
To get started, all you have to do is create an account and login as a business owner as you would any other accounts such as Facebook. We then review your account details and activate the account which allows you to login. Business owners then need to feed the system from the comprehensive dashboard i.e staff names/styles and prices/customer data and so on. Your will need to remember your user ID and password to login.. We offer a 14 days free trial period where the customer gets basic computer training as well as using of the software. They get to enjoy the services for free and give their review at the end. Since January this year, when we became fully operational we have managed to partner with more than 50 salons and barbershops who are successfully using the system.
One of the challenges we face like any other tech company is access to computers/machines which most salons do not have. Currently we are offering Complementary tablets with wireless keyboards to all our subscribed customers with no access to machines to maximize on our market reach. These come with preloaded data all year round.
Our charges for the initial one off subscription is 10,000 Ksh and a monthly maintenance fee of 2,900 Ksh
This is exclusively for the salon owner panel.
For both salon owners and technicians panel total cost is 3,900 sh (includes APP for technicians) and lastly for the salon owners technicians and customers panel costs 4,900 ksh .( technicians and customers APP)
Currently we are working on the last stages of development that is technicians and customers panel that are both Applications.
Currently myself and a team of nine employees have been going out to various salons across the city to show them exactly how functional the software is. Social media has played a big role in terms of creating awareness but what I can attribute our success to is purely on the support we have received from some of the Salon owners who attended our launch last year August as they helped kick start this whole process.
Eight months down the line we are thrilled to be successfully growing with new partnerships with key industry players. We are looking forward to the next phase of development technician’s panel and APP that is going to take Uneeq to the next level.
My advice to young people starting a business is more on stressing what has been said numerously, just start. If you have an idea it doesn’t have to be a great one, as long as you have identified a problem that needs a solution go out there and provide this solution. Already you have your niche. And one does not necessarily require a lot to start up a business. Its like cooking, if you have the basic ingredients and you know what you are doing you are going to make a meal from what is set in front of you. Know your product after all knowledge is power. And lastly, use the readily available resources. That is friends, family or even associates, their advice is free.
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