There are tons of platforms that allow you to find beauty services, so what makes Taper different? Black Enterprise caught up with founder Luke Lawal Jr. to discuss how he feels the platform differentiates itself in the market, why he started it, and what his current users are saying about it.
Taper, Founder & CEO (Image: Luke Lawal Jr.)
Black Enterprise: In three sentences or less, tell me about your background.
I’m an African American, millennial, passionate entrepreneur from Washington, D.C now living in downtown Los Angeles. I’m also an HBCU advocate, Bowie State graduate, and the founder of HBCU Buzz, a media outlet with a primary focus on HBCUs.
Why did you start Taper?
While working on Capitol Hill in DC, I was allotted a 20-30-minute lunch break, which I used to get a haircut near my office. The weekly issue would be using portions of that time to stop at the ATM for cash and other tasks I needed to get done within that small window of time. I developed Taper to not only solve those two problems but modernize the oldest pastime in the urban community, the barbershop and salon. The inspiration was geared around time management and fast-paced environments.
With so many beauty platforms in the market, how do you stack up against the competitors?
We leverage affordability, access, community, and dope features. We stack up well against our competitors.
How long have you all been on the market and what is the customer’s feedback?
The beta version of the Taper app was introduced into the marketplace six months ago, October 2017. After spending loads of time in communities surrounding our product, our customer’s feedback has been positive and very suggestive, with a 4.7/5 rating out of 148 customers. Here’s what one customer had to say; (5) stars “Love the user-friendly interface. Easy to book appointments. The only future improvement I would think can be done to Taper, would be adding push notifications maybe a couple hours prior to appointments made. A thought would be maybe adding it to our apple wallet app as a reminder”
How do users access the platform?
Customers can access our platform on the Apple Store or Google Play Store by searching Taper.