Montréal-based retail tech startup Booxi has received $1.5 million CAD in financing from Investissement Quebec and Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC).
The company was founded in 2013 by Daniel Laplante, Elie Perez, and Marc-André Bruneau with a mission to “make commerce more human.”
“We’ve established ourselves as a leader in the category and now are ready to move on to the next chapter in our story: scale.”
– Daniel Laplante
The $1.5 million represents Booxi’s first institutional financing to date as the startup claims to have been bootstrapped since its launch.
Booxi started off with providing appointment booking SaaS solutions for local businesses and as the company progressed, it grew its product suite to offer appointment software dedicated to enterprises.
With the tool installed, Booxi claims that retailers can see a between two to seven times increase in the number of items getting sold in a single purchase, and a 90 percent conversion rate (the amount of visitors that complete a purchase) when shopping.
‘’We took the time to get to product-market fit, and be fit for growth, building a product that truly makes appointment scheduling easy and address the regulation and security requirements of our enterprise customers.’’ says Laplante, co-founder and CEO at Booxi. ‘’We’ve established ourselves as a leader in the category and now are ready to move on to the next chapter in our story: scale.’’
Before starting Booxi, Laplante has founded other startups that operate in the SaaS industry. In 1988, he founded MISTIC Software with Nicolas Bélanger to provide multi-platform development technologies to casual video game developers. The company was acquired by notable video game company Atari in 2000, and eventually became DTI-Software in 2001.
Booxi currently serves over 1,500 clients in more than 80 countries and facilitates five million appointments per year. Its appointment booking platform is used by brands such as L’Oréal, Sephora, and Decathlon.
Although it calls Montréal home, Booxi also has offices in Paris with a workforce of 35. The company has also participated in multiple accelerators such as Plug & Play, La maison de Startup LVMH, L’Oreal Beauty Tech Atelier, and the US Retail Tech Accelerator.
Its technology is integrated with Lightspeed’s point of sale platform as well as with San Francisco, California-headquartered Stripe. The partnership enables Booxi users to pay for their appointment online when making a booking.
Featured image from Booxi