“I’m probably the only person who’s ever completed the NDRC Accelerator without a Leaving Cert.” - Conor Moules and Barespace have a lot to prove
An interview with Conor Moules, CEO of Barespace, by Joe Gorman NDRC Programme Manager.
Conor Moules and Glenn McGoldrick of Barespace
It’s a warm Wednesday afternoon and Conor Moules is talking with his hands, snipping and trimming anecdotes from a life that saw him leave school without a Leaving Cert, kickstart a wildly successful stint in sales, before finally founding Barespace, the startup making waves in the Irish beauty industry.
He is engaging and funny - if Conor was your barber, you would look forward to the conversation as much as the haircut. But is he as chatty when he’s in the chair?
“After ten minutes I’m ready to stop talking. And I have an eye condition which means that when they’re holding up a mirror to the back of my head, I’m essentially resembling a nodding dog. That’s why it’s important to know that your stylist has skills before you get there.”
Barespace helps barbershops, salons, and spa businesses to automate their business management while directing booking, billing, and pretty much every other administrative task through a single platform. It solves a checklist of issues in an industry with a host of software options, most of which are clunkily designed “outdated first-generation products” according to Moules. His team has built an operating system for the beauty industry, enabling beauty entrepreneurs to focus on quality and customer satisfaction, rather than trawling through data options to try and drive growth.
Timing is one of the intangibles that determines success or failure in building a high-growth startup, and Barespace seems to have got theirs just right. “COVID drove up technology adoption in the industry. We’ve onboarded 100 salons and just four of those were pen-and-paper businesses. Our customers now have all of this raw data, they know that they should have a consistent marketing approach and a ‘north star’ for growth that is tracked. You can do all this stuff if you have an eight-person marketing team, but not if you have one salon with six staff members.”
“There’s always going to be a human element to it. So how can we free up the owner to scale their business effectively and allow them to concentrate on service rather than getting bums on seats?” We think about how we can add more value and make our product the only thing they need to use to run their business technically.”
Moules has skin in the game. His first job, as a teenage apprentice at Peter Marks, gave him a feel for the “social fabric” in salons: “You see people coming in with the weight of the world on their shoulders, getting into the seat, and leaving in a completely different headspace.”
Like many young Irish people, the pull of emigration brought Moules to Australia, where he “fell into sales, and loved it - I guess you love anything you’re good at.” But it was only back in Ireland at Bamboo, working under well-known entrepreneur Luke Mackey, that the startup bug bit him: “It hit me - I can do this thing.”
Seeing the glut of VC money flowing into food and beverage startups was the catalyst: “My average order size at Bamboo was between €5 and €6. Our average order size today is more than ten times that. So much money had flooded in to help food and beverage operators grow their businesses. The rate of technology and the rate of adoption in the hair and beauty industry just wasn’t there. It screamed massive commercial opportunities.”
Conor & Glenn during mentoring session at NDRC Accelerator
Glenn McGoldrick, COO of Barespace
Around this time, serendipity struck when Moules met co-founder Glenn McGoldrick, then an ambitious barber with plans to take over the world: “Glenn is a renowned personality in the industry: an international educator, he has a big following, he is well respected. I met him before any of that happened,” Moules explains. “I was going to a wedding and needed a haircut so I went into a barber shop in Temple Bar and there was Glenn. Now, I’m not the type of person that gives compliments. But that day, I went out, took a picture of his little square freelance business card, and posted it to my Twitter and Instagram saying “This is the best barber in Ireland.” From that day, I knew he was special.”
McGoldrick had ambitions to scale his talents beyond a single chair and went on to found MENSPIRE Ireland, a barbering business that has grown to five locations and an education academy for aspiring stylists. The two co-founders were at a similar stage in life. “We just became instant friends,” says Moules. “Both of us gave up alcohol in our early twenties. We’re both in long-term relationships. We’re able to communicate effectively to be able to put the business before anything else. I don’t want to sound too weird about it, but it’s like we’re made for each other.”
Going into business with a friend is a dangerous game and can often be fatal for the friendship. How do you know whether or not it’s going to work once financial responsibility, stress, and deadlines enter the fray”
“He was the only person I've ever met still to this day who wanted to be successful as much as I did. Most people can list out what they want. They want a Range Rover, they want the Amex Black Card. Glenn and I are different in the fact that we want to be respected businesspeople first. I'm a sales guy. Glenn ran a hair salon. But we've managed to build this product and this team that are massively punching above their weight.”
Moules has the chip on his shoulder that drives successful founders. ‘We’re the rejects. There’s no ex-Google, there’s no ex-Twitter. I’m probably the only person who’s ever completed the NDRC Accelerator without a Leaving Cert. I guess it’s imposter syndrome as well. You're constantly waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder and say, “Hey, listen: you didn't go to Trinity, this isn't for you. This isn't your game.”
The co-founders have assembled an impressive team to work on the product, and their long-term goal is to break the 10,000 salon mark: “We want to dominate Europe then go to APAC. Our big competitors are focused on the US. The folks who have raised venture capital are trying to win the States, passing clients back and forth, and it just seems like a fool’s errand to us. When we look at the market and spend per capita, Australia, New Zealand, or Singapore are (more interesting).”
And for Moules himself: what does the future hold?
“If you look at my peers, we don't describe ourselves as founders, we just describe ourselves as business people. I think it's cool to be a “founder” for the first three months of the business and the last three months of the business. If you hang your hat on being a ‘30 under 30’ and king of the founders, you generally get clipped. I’ve proven that I’m a brilliant zero-to-one guy in having a vision, putting together a team, and executing at a high level. Now I’m proving that I’m not just a zero-to-one guy.”
