Mayvenn offers an e‑commerce tool and a services marketplace that drives new clientele to a curated network of over 50,000 hair stylists. Led by CEO Diishan Imira and based in Oakland, CA, the platform enables stylists to earn money selling beauty products and, over the past two years, expanded into marketplace salon services. Customers can currently find Mayvenn Beauty Lounges inside five Walmart stores in Texas, which function as retail shopping experiences and virtual booking centers. The stores generate both product sale revenue and marketplace salon services revenue. The company plans to expand these Beauty Lounges to 400 Walmart locations and scale its omni-channel strategy to bring scale to Mayvenn’s brand and platform. Mayvenn intends to use the funds to support continued expansion of its digital platform into more productivity tools for stylists and to grow its end-to-end beauty ecosystem encompassing services and products. Mayvenn operates an e-commerce marketplace that sells hair products and connects customers with a network of hairstylists for installation. It is shifting to an all-inclusive model that bundles product and installation so customers pay roughly the cost of the hair and get installation—about 40% less than previous total costs. The company emphasizes its stylist network as a competitive advantage over direct-to-consumer competitors like AliExpress and aims to return more revenue to stylists. Since accelerating through 500 Startups in 2013, Mayvenn has generated about $80 million in revenue over five years and paid out over $20 million in commissions to stylists. Mayvenn’s mission focuses on developing entrepreneurial talent within the Black community by redirecting haircare spend back to community owners and stylists. Co-founder and CEO Diishan Imira and COO Taylor Wang lead the company’s go-to-market and operations as it scales the bundled offering. Mayvenn provides stylists with branded webstores, marketing support and a commission structure (15%) so they can sell reliable, lower-cost imported hair extensions without holding inventory. The founder leverages long-standing vendor relationships in Asia and Mandarin fluency to control quality and cost. The company calls itself an "inventory as a service" business for beauticians and emphasizes empowering stylists to run retail. Mayvenn has rapidly scaled to about 30,000 stylists in roughly a year and a half and is already generating eight-figure annual revenue. The startup targets heavy users of extensions (notably African-American women) but views the market as broader. Management plans to use new capital to scale aggressively and aims to grow from eight-figure to 10-figure annual revenue.

Total raised

$73M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series C

Latest activity

Jul 2022