Milan - Uala (https://www.uala.it), a leading Italian online booking platform for health and beauty treatments, has announced the acquisition of its Spanish counterpart Bucmi (https://www.bucmi.com), following a new round of investments in the Spanish company. Madrid-based Bucmi, which Pablo Lago and Javier Garcia de la Calera established in 2012, is a booking platform for beauty salons and spas in Spain and Portugal, where it is a leader in the sector.
The Spanish Fund Onza Venture Capital, which has financed Bucmi since 2014, has supported Uala in its new round of investments. "The market for hair and beauty salons in Spain and Portugal is worth 3.6 billion euros. With over 3,700 salons already registered on the site, Bucmi has succeeded in positioning itself as a very popular brand in Spain, thanks to its strategic investments in marketing," said Alessandro Bruzzi, co-founder and CEO of Uala. "Now we're going to work on developing a common platform for the three markets.
The startups operating in this sector, including Uala, started launching their services five years ago. And today the beauty salons and spas sector is consolidating, thanks to new technologies and major investments in marketing. We believe it is a great opportunity for the change we are supporting in the way people book hair-salons and beauty centres and we are determined to speed it up," concluded Mr Bruzzi. Considering the average dimension of Italian cities and Internet dissemination, which is not as capillary as in other European countries, it is harder to accurately map beauty salons and spas in Italy. It was a challenge Uala was able to win by making a special effort. Once it launched its services and reached a critical mass of salons, Uala met with great success and rapid growth across Italy. Immobiliare.it granted the company five million euros to fund its growth in 2015.
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