hub:raum welcomes third startup Salonmeister to the incubator

• Third startup joins hub:raum with online booking tool for hair and beauty appointments
• Concept convinces hub:raum and other investors

hub:raum, the Deutsche Telekom incubator, is now supporting the Salonmeister team. The startup was founded in spring 2012 by Phillipp Rechberg, Louis Pfitzner and Nils Griess-Nega. The online booking platform for hair appointments went live last fall and has already proved successful in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich.

The idea behind the platform is to make it easy to find the right hairdresser and book appointments. With Salonmeister, customers are no longer tied to shop opening times when they make their bookings. When they enter a town or postcode in the system, it displays a list of establishments in the neighborhood. Detailed profiles with photos provide information about concept, team, services and prices. Ratings given by other customers round off the picture and help customers make the right decision.

Connected hair salons can get an up-to-date view of free capacities at any time on the electronic calendar. The working day becomes more efficient as a result of fewer phone calls, and winning new customers as a result of recommendations is a key success factor.

Salonmeister will soon be available in other big German cities and is also set to expand its offer with beauty and cosmetic services.

"In Salonmeister we have found a great team and a highly promising concept. The main point that convinced us was that the platform offers advantages for end-customers as well as retailers. Since Salonmeister's success largely depends on whether it manages to develop the mass market, we at Deutsche Telekom can provide crucial support - for example with access to our customers. Numerous synergies are also conceivable in SME sales, an area in which the team plans to position itself as a platform for service providers in the mid- to long-term," explains Peter Borchers, who heads hub:raum operations.

Along with hub:raum, Oliver Pabst, Christophe Maire and Tim Müller were others who recognized the potential behind the idea and have chosen to support the young team as investors.

hub:raum was launched in Berlin in mid-2012 to support startups which have new ideas for telecommunications services, Internet services and digital media. The incubator provides a pool of experts, the huge Deutsche Telekom network, workspace and seed financing of up to EUR 300,000. Program plans currently call for a total of ten to 15 startups to be supported per year, and companies may enter the program at any time. So far, support is being provided for Blinkist and stylemarks.

About Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with more than 131 million mobile customers, 33 million fixed-network lines and over 17 million broadband lines (as of September 30, 2012). The Group provides fixed-network, mobile communications, Internet and IPTV products and services for consumers, and ICT solutions for business and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in some 50 countries and has over 230,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenue of EUR 58.7 billion in the 2011 financial year – over half of it outside Germany (as of December 31, 2011).

About SALONMEISTER
SALONMEISTER is a booking platform for hair appointments. Here, customers can find the best salons in town and book appointments online independently of retail opening times. SALONMEISTER offers the hair salons new customers, a better service for existing customers and noticeably less work in the salon. At the same time, it reduces the number of customers who cancel appointments and increases customer traffic. SALONMEISTER was founded in Berlin in April 2012 and is now available in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. Soon, SALONMEISTER will provide access to the best salons in more big cities and offer services in other beauty segments such as waxing, cosmetics and nail products.
Find out more at: www.salonmeister.de