French beauty-booking platform Planity has reached a milestone that few European software companies achieve. Ten years after its launch, the company has surpassed €80 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), reached profitability, and now serves more than 60,000 beauty businesses across France, Germany, and Belgium.
For founder and CEO Antoine Puymirat, however, the numbers tell only part of the story.
Speaking to The French Tech Journal, Puymirat argued that Planity's success came not from chasing growth at all costs, but from building a business that competitors would struggle to replicate. As the company prepares to expand into wellbeing services and invest heavily in AI-powered tools, he believes the principles that fuelled its first decade remain unchanged.
A different model from day one
When Planity launched in 2016, online booking was already well established in sectors such as travel and restaurants, but beauty remained largely offline. Most appointments were still made by telephone or written into paper diaries.
Rather than adopting the commission-based marketplace model popularised by competitors such as Treatwell, Planity opted for a flat monthly SaaS subscription. Salons pay a fixed fee based on their business size while remaining free to bring their own customers onto the platform.
Puymirat said he believed this created a much healthier relationship with customers.
"We were convinced somebody would eventually capture the majority of the European market," he said. "But we didn't think taking 20 or 30 percent commission on every booking was the right model."
Instead, the company focused on helping salons digitize their businesses while allowing them to retain ownership of their customer relationships. That approach, combined with growing consumer adoption, created a powerful marketplace dynamic as more businesses attracted more users, and vice versa.
Today, Planity attracts around 15 million unique users each month and has managed more than 500 million appointments since its launch.
COVID nearly brought the company to an end
The company's trajectory was far from inevitable.
Puymirat revealed that, just before the COVID-19 pandemic, Planity had only around 15 days of cash remaining after a planned fundraising with a Chinese investor collapsed.
"I called our existing investors and told them if they didn’t intervene, we would have to close the company," he recalled. "Two hours later, they called back and said yes."
The emergency financing allowed Planity to survive one of the most difficult periods in its history. While beauty salons were forced to close during lockdowns, the company gave customers free access to its platform, helping them manage the surge in appointments once restrictions were lifted.
Later that year, Planity completed a €10 million Series B financing, giving the company fresh momentum.
The pandemic also reinforced demand for digital booking, accelerating adoption among salon owners who had previously relied on paper diaries and telephone appointments.
Building a moat competitors struggle to cross
Asked what advice he would give other founders, Puymirat's answer was immediate.
"You need a moat," he said. "You can always be copied."
For Planity, that moat extends far beyond software.
One layer comes from the marketplace itself. As more beauty professionals join the platform, consumers have more choices. As more consumers book through Planity, the platform becomes increasingly valuable for businesses. The network effects become progressively harder for rivals to reproduce.
Another comes from the company's unusually large field sales organization.
Planity employs around 250 salespeople, many of whom work directly with salons on the ground. Convincing thousands of small businesses to abandon paper calendars and adopt digital software required face-to-face relationships that could not easily be replaced by online marketing alone.
"It's people-intensive," Puymirat said, explaining that this physical presence has itself become a competitive advantage.
Brand has become another important layer of protection.
Rather than allowing larger technology platforms to absorb its booking infrastructure through white-label integrations, Planity has deliberately kept its own brand visible throughout the customer journey. That brand mirrors the aesthetics of beauty brands and high-end hairdressers with a minimalist black-and-white look.
He pointed to discussions with Google, explaining that the company chose direct Planity links over invisible integrations because maintaining customer recognition would become increasingly important as new AI-powered search experiences emerge.
AI should remove interruptions, not replace people
Artificial intelligence represents the company's next major investment, although Puymirat described a notably pragmatic vision of its role.
One of Planity's first AI products will be an intelligent telephone assistant that can answer calls when salon staff are busy with clients. The system will respond to common questions, book appointments, and update calendars automatically.
"The hairdresser shouldn't have to stop cutting someone's hair to answer the phone," he said.
Beyond voice, Planity is also developing AI tools capable of analyzing occupancy rates, customer loyalty, no-shows and employee performance to help businesses improve profitability.
However, Puymirat was careful to distinguish these tools from autonomous business advisors.
The insights will rely exclusively on each customer's own operational data rather than combining information across the platform. Although Planity possesses a vast amount of booking data, he said the company has no intention of monetizing it.
"We could monetize the data," he said. "But we don't want to, and our clients wouldn't like it."
Europe still offers plenty of room to grow
Despite achieving profitability, Planity shows little interest in pursuing US expansion.
Instead, the company believes Europe remains significantly underpenetrated. While around 75% of hotel reservations are now booked online, Puymirat estimated that only around 11% of beauty and wellbeing appointments are currently booked online.
He believes that the gap leaves considerable room for growth.
Germany, where Planity launched in 2023, already has around 6,000 partner businesses and more than one million users. The company expects international partners to account for almost 15% of its network by the end of this year as Germany and Belgium continue to scale.
Meanwhile, Planity is broadening its addressable market beyond traditional beauty services into wellbeing professions including reflexology, sophrology, hypnotherapy and life coaching, with plans to expand further into areas such as fitness.
Rather than signaling a change in strategy, Puymirat sees the move as a natural extension of the company's ambition to become Europe's default platform for booking personal care services.
For him, however, the long-term challenge remains the same as it was a decade ago: continuing to strengthen the competitive advantages that helped Planity reach scale in the first place.
Because, as he put it, "you can always be copied."
