Jody Riley from Formby, founded Pamperbook in 2018 – an app that allows customers to book appointments with hundreds of beauty salons and freelancers. Tony McDonough reports

Merseyside digital entrepreneur Jody Riley is looking to expand her beauty booking business overseas after securing investment worth £250,000.

Jody, from Formby, founded Pamperbook in 2018. The company’s app allows customers to book appointments with hundreds of beauty salons and freelancers. So far it has attracted more than 400 businesses and over 5,000 customers.

Now, with new backing, the business and its eight-strong team is set to relaunch new with new branding and mum-of-two Jody wants to expand the concept across the UK and overseas.

Pamperbook runs two apps – one for customers and one for businesses. The business-facing app will be relaunched over the coming days with a new scheduler and digital diary. This will be followed by a relaunch of the customer-facing app in September.

Jody told LBN: “We are currently transferring our hundreds of existing users over from the old system to the new PamperBook. We have plans to create sales and account manager teams in other cities in the UK by early next year with hopes to go worldwide by May 2021. 

“Other booking systems have proven to be really hard and very ‘tecchy’. I found the beauty industry doesn’t really like anything too complicated so what we did was build something really simple and effective with a touch of pink to match our brand.”

Jody believes now is the perfect time to relaunch Pamperbook with a number of salons set to open on July 4 with a relaxing of the coronavirus restrictions. She added: “I’m now a single parent of two boys and working in the current crisis has been challenging, to say the least

“While in lockdown I also created a ‘beauty coaching’ page where I helped a lot of businesses keep going and also helped motivate and inspire them to take advantage of the time they had to work on their business goals. 

“Now the hair and beauty industry is ready to return on July 4. We have a brand new booking app and we have already taken so many taking pre bookings already. It’s safe to say we are already of to a flying start.”