Flex-appeal, the Rotterdam-based startup for part-time employees in the retail and hospitality industry has raised 600.000 euro from two informal investors. The names of these informals has not be disclosed. The capital raised will be used to double the size of the team of the startup to 16 people and add new features to the Flex-appeal app. In 2016 the startup raised 185.00 euro from an informal investor.
Flex-appeal is founded by Ruben Wieman and Guido Schmitz in 2014. Wieman started pondering about a solution when he was a stocker himself at a supermarkt, solving his own itch. Now five years later, the company can count Gamma, Amsterdam Arena, New York Pizza, Randstad and Albert Heijn, the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands, to its clients base.
“We offer a 360 degree solution to improve the employee experience in these sectors” says Ruben Wieman in an announcement (in Dutch) about the funding. “As a 17-years old employee in this sector I have had first-hand exposure to the often very outdated parts of this experience. Young people are used to apps like Snapchat and Instagram, while at companies in these industries they have to communicate via the communication tools of the previous generation: newsletters, intranet and a printed schedules hanging on a wall in the kitchen.”
One of the problems Flex-appeal solves is enabling employees to get a real-time view of their schedule and be able to ask colleagues through the app to swap working hours. For companies it offers the possibility to improve the employee experience through an advanced on-boarding process and easy communication via the app. Schmitz: “Flex-appeal enables employees to find a replacement via the app instead calling for hours back and forth to colleagues before they have finally found somebody.”
The startup states that it has this year already welcomed four big supermarkets as clients that have onboarded hundreds of employees to the platform. Wieman and Schmitz, both just 22 years of age, have a big vision about Flex-appeal. “Our ambition is to build the best employees platform for non-desk organisations in the world. A platform with which we can improve the lives of employees significantly”, says Wieman.
Photo by Andrea Tummons on Unsplash