CosmoBiz Magazine May2020 | Page 30

Beauty CROWDFUNDING STARTUP, BEAUTY BACKER, INTRODUCES NEW “COVAID” CATEGORY ALLOWING SMALL BUSINESSES IMPACTED BY THE CORONAVIRUS TO COLLECT DONATIONS WITH ZERO FEES Beauty Backer announced COVaid, a new category on its crowdfunding platform. COVaid provides access to zero-fee fundraising for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and startups to keep their business- es afloat as the world fights the Coronavirus and offers a way for communities to support local small businesses. Beauty Backer is a reward-based crowdfunding platform exclusively for cosmetics and personal care campaigns. To help other small businesses, who may not qualify for other forms of COVID-19 funding, Beauty Backer created a new category and made it accessible to all! COVaid is a donation-based category on Beauty Backer, open to small businesses, entrepreneurs and startups of all industries – brick and mortar, di- rect-to-consumer and online. Jacqueline Gutierrez, CEO of Beauty Backer states: “We’ve carved out a very specific place for small business owners to raise funds without paying fees, we don’t want it to be difficult to get the support you need, we want to make it as easy as possible.” Beauty Backer is not collecting any fees on contri- butions to businesses made through COVaid, how- ever, Stripe processing fees will still apply. Guti- errez has reached out to Stripe, without response, to partner on this initiative in hopes that they will waive their processing fees. On platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter, the competition to be noticed and funded is too steep 30 C O S M O B I Z M A G A Z I N E for individual beauty products. Approximately 70% of their contributors are men and the success rate for beauty is only about 25% on Kickstarter, even though crowdfunding is an important step on a brand’s journey to success. In the meantime, the global beauty market is expected to grow from $432.7 billion in 2016 to $750 billion by 2024. COVaid allows these businesses to quickly set up a crowdfunding campaign and start collecting do- nations from family, friends, loyal customers and anyone else who wants to keep local businesses functioning, and serving the community, when so- cial restrictions are lifted. Gutierrez says: “We want to be sure that our favorite hair salon, pizzeria or