Bad hair days are nettlesome enough, but trying to book last-minute blowouts to spruce up your look can make you really tear your hair out.
Thanks to a New York-based startup that’s just expanded to Chicago, those days might soon be over. Meet Vive, an app that makes it easier to book last minute blowouts at top salons.
“Our mission is to help women look and feel their best at all times,” said Alanna Gregory, Vive founder and CEO.
Gregory said Vive’s on-demand, subscription-based service intelligently matches users with a salon that’s best suited for the task, based on location and appointment availability.
Vive fully vets all of the salons in its network. Chicagoans who choose to subscribe to their service will have access to more than 60 participating salons, including Sine Qua Non Salons, Swerve Salon, Salon Blue, and Mixed Co. Salon.
Gregory, a former Wall Street data scientist, said the need for an app like Vive arose after personal difficulties trying to book blowouts left her routinely scrambling.
“It was really hard to get an appointment at a trusted salon,” she said.
With Vive, appointments can be booked as quickly as 30 minutes in advance, arming women with last-second haircare support — and helping salons fill chairs, too. Users can schedule blowouts up to a week in advance, but Gregory said half of all of the company’s bookings are made within 24 hours of the appointment.
“All you have to do is tell Vive where you are when you want your appointment and let Vive take care of the rest,” she said.
Vive has three subscription packages: unlimited blowouts for $150/month; four blowouts at $115/month; and two per month for $65.
Chicago marks the company’s first expansion since its launch in the Big Apple early this year. And Gregory said Chicago is an important step on the company’s path to success.
“We knew that a lot of our early adopters would be here: women in technology, advertising, and PR,” she said. “We’d like to be able to say we launched a city. We want to see it blossom.”
Gregory added that — due to population and salon density — Chicago was a logical next step. She hopes Chicago will help rev Vive’s engines for an anticipated Los Angeles launch in 2016.
“We’ll have learned a lot from Chicago,” she said. “It will be our midwestern foothold.”
Vive is currently available on iOS and the web.
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