How Temple students have influenced the new Philly-based beauty app

Being a busy college student is hard, but being a busy college student on top of your beauty game is even harder. ManeStreem is here to help you feel beautiful in between studying, coffee dates and getting wild at the Horse. The best part? ManeStreem’s beauty providers will come right to your apartment or dorm in good ol’ North Philadelphia.

As college students we don’t have all the time in the world to look up makeup tutorials or spend hours trying to get our hair to curl. But I mean it’s college, we want to look our best and feel our best when we’re out.

ManeStreem is the Uber of beauty apps. All you have to do is pick a stylist for hair, makeup, nails or even a relaxing massage, and they’ll come right to you. Santos Gonzalez, the creator of the app, knew that there was something lacking in the beauty industry and found a way to make life a lot easier for us! He added a few Temple Owls to his team and created what is now a very successful app.

ManeStreem has over 1500 beauty professionals on the platform, providing services in 42 states. Lucky for us Temple students, they first started right here in Philadelphia.

Manestreem is Temple Made

Santos explained to us how influential both Temple students and graduates have been on the company. They currently have seven Temple employees that fill positions as project manager, social media manager, sales, marketing and design.

He referred to his connection with Temple students as “meant to be.” A Temple graduate, Alex Falcone, applied to Manestreem as a part-time employee about six months ago. Impressed with Alex’s work ethic, ability to be innovative and ability to execute tasks, Santos asked Alex to find more people just like him. Since then Santos has hired more students from Temple and is currently looking to hire even more because to him they all have proved to be “rock stars.”

“I have run three different major organizations and not one touches Temple students,” Santos said. “Talent is extremely hard to find and that is the difference between successful and unsuccessful businesses. We have a dream team.”

Jamie McNulty, a junior Advertising student here at Temple, is one of Santos’s employees as she currently works as Manestreem’s social media manager. She explained how influential the company has been in her career and the great experiences that she has been able to be apart of.

“One of the biggest things I’ve learned is how to market myself,” she said. “If you have a good idea, pitch it – don’t keep it in.”

How the app works

The app is super easy. All you have to do is download the app and register as a client. From there you can choose from hundreds of beauty professionals registered on the app to come directly to you. This comes in super handy if you have a special event that night or simply just feel like being pampered that day.

The beauty professionals have a little more work before becoming a registered professional on the app. In order for them to officially be a part of the platform they have to go through an audition verification. Santos stated that about 60 percent of people that apply for their verification end up on the platform.

“We look at what type of products they use, are they nice, are they professional – stuff like that to make sure they are what we want to represent our brand,” Santos said.

Each beauty professional is rated by the providers, as well as, clients. In order for the beauty professional to stay on the platform they must keep at least a 4-star rating. Their services range, as well as the prices from each individual stylist.

“We allow the beauty professionals to really market themselves and build their own brand,” Santos said. “So if someone is fresh out of school they may charge 30 dollars for a blowout but if it’s a celebrity stylist that has been doing hair across the world they may charge 80 to 90 bucks for a blowout.”

The mastermind behind it all

Santos Gonzalez graduated from Rider University with a degree in Finance. He worked for Philly.com for seven years before starting his own business, helping them launch seven of their apps. But in September 2015, a week after the idea popped into his head, he became the creator of a whole new platform.

He got the idea at a party with some of the top beauty professionals in New Jersey and used it as an opportunity to pick their brain and see what was next for their industry. At the party, he listened to stylists talk about how a lot of clients from the salon wanted them to come into their home and they really wanted to do that but didn’t know how. In that moment, Santos came up with a plan to resolve that problem.

“I realized there was a deficit in marketing and knowing how to market themselves,” Santos said. He surveyed with stylists to see if a technology that would bring users, consumers and beauty professionals together in an app like Uber would be something of interest to them. The beauty professionals were amazed by the idea and a week from that day Santos started the company.

“I’ve always been an innovator in a sense, a creater, someone who likes to create technology and push limits,” he said.

Manestreem was launched in Philly because it was the home city for both Santos and his business partner. They knew that Philly wasn’t going to be the easiest market to launch in so they took on the challenge.

“Philly isn’t known as a glamorous city and we knew that,” Santos said. “After we raised our initial dollars, we said we could either skip Philadelphia and go straight to New York or Miami, which we knew would be easier, or we could launch in an unforgiving city like Philadelphia and push us in the market and learn what works here and what doesn’t.”

Now they have providers in 42 states, and Philadelphia, New York, Miami and New Jersey stand as their biggest markets. With a solid team behind Santos made up of a few of our talented Temple Owls, the company plans to continue growing and expanding into more markets.

@morgkola