KU Newsroom|KU Insights

HOME

now page

KU Insights

게시판 -- 목록(갤러리)

Dreamary, a platform that connects rookie hairdressers and consu...

Writer : KU Today
Hits : 685
Date : 2019-06-13

KU Start Up
“If you cannot prove yourself without work experience, I will be your guarantor.” Dreamary, a platform that connects rookie hairdressers and consumers

▲(From left) Jung Joo-hee (’15, Department of Sociology), CEO Lee Tae-hoon (’13, Department of Chinese Language and Literature),

Park Ji-yoon (hairdresser), CEO Shim Gun-woo (’13 Division of Business Administration & Department of Statistics)

By connecting new hairdressers and their potential consumers, Dreamary, a social venture that seeks to create social values, offers rookies the opportunity to pursue their dreams by honing their skills while providing consumers with services at reasonable prices. The platform works as an O2O service that connects rookie hairdressers and customers.

Providing rookies with opportunities while offering consumers affordable services!

Co-founders Shim Gun-woo and Lee Tae-hoon of Dreamary met each other for the first time in a university coding club called “Likelion”. Since neither of them were majoring in programming, they spent days and nights trying to grasp the essence of coding. While doing so, they felt the urge to give hopes to other non-specialists like them in a society that seems to value only experienced people and experts. Then one day, Lee happened to have a conversation with a hairdresser that he had known for years. The hairdresser had spent five years doing hair modeling but found it hard to constantly find hair models who could help him build and upgrade his portfolio for promotion purposes.

“I learned that apart from their skills, hairdressers need a lot of hair models that they can work with in order to get promoted. However, they seemed to have trouble demonstrating their abilities due to their difficulty in finding hair models. This was due to the fact that there was no channel to show how competent they were despite having a national license, certification, and experience in their field. That’s why we came up with a service that could match hairdressers with hair models. In exchange for hair modelling, the customers get discounts to color or perm their hair at affordable prices,” Lee explained.

Dreamary has created a service platform that allows customers to make reservations by having access to certified certification verification, user reviews, and the hairdressers’ portfolios. Through this platform, customers can check preliminary validations and vivid testimonials with their own eyes and can book an appointment. The biggest advantage of Dreamary’s service is that not only can customers receive service from qualified hairdressers but can also receive price benefits by only paying the cost of the materials needed for their service. Currently, people who receive services through Dreamary pay just KRW 5,000 for a haircut and KRW 35,000 for coloring or perms, which is only 20 to 30% of current market price.

Once customers receive a message that confirms an appointment with their hairdresser, they simply go to designated hair salons, get their requested service, and later post their review online. However, what makes Dreamary special is that their customers not only receive their desired service but also help new hairdressers pursue their dreams. By doing so, both sides are providing new opportunities for each other.

Shim explained, “We started our business to allow those going after their dreams a chance to prove themselves, rather than our just being mutual guarantors.

Giving plenty of opportunities for those to wish to take on challenges is what Dreamary aims to do. More than 90% of our users say they plan to use this platform again and this is how the users become regular customers of hairdressers who they have come to know through Dreamary. In this way, we can proudly support and recommend those who cultivate their dreams through Dreamary. In recent years, the demand has increased not only for hairdressers who are working on getting a promotion but also for experienced hairdressers who have more than three years of work experience as well as newbies in their first or second year of work. We will continue to evolve as a personalized platform that allows users to find the right hairdressers for them at a reasonable price while providing hairdressers the chance to hone their skills.”

The importance of Dreamary’s business value lies on its chance to change society

Dreamary’s ultimate goal is not just to create a platform to match hairdressers to their customers. It hopes to become a means to assist prospective hairdressers in becoming competent, independent freelancers by allowing them to become professionals who can objectively present and promote their own skills by gaining the recognition of their customers. In addition to hairdressers, Dreamary plans to expand their business to reach out and help freelancers in the design industry with similar career paths such as stylists, makeup artists, and fashion models. As long as there is room for freelance artists and customers to meet and work offline, anything is possible.

“We received a lot of help from the Crimson Start-up Support Foundation, π-Ville, Start-up Station, and many others when we first founded our start-up in August 2017. Since we were just students, we made mistakes due to our lack of experience. However, the university offered mentoring programs and helped us to get in touch with related companies in the field. We don’t think that we will be able to get more support at this level. Therefore, we thought that we might as well help others having trouble chasing their dreams. The name of our company is a compound word made of “dream” and “mary”. The name implies a space where people can dream and make their dreams come true. In addition to hairdressers, we would also like to do something meaningful by adding more ideas for rookies in our society. There are a lot of businesses that people can do if they just want to make money. However, this is not the case for us. We are more interested in whether our business is doing something that is worthwhile and meaningful in changing our society.” After Shim made his comments, many employees nodded in agreement.

It is hoped that these wonderful young entrepreneurs, who are working on bringing about worthwhile change in society succeed with their future endeavors.