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S’pore’s First “Happy Hour App”: Get Up To 70% Off On Beauty, Lifestyle Deals During Off-Peak

ULO Vulcan Post

This article was a feature of ULO Lifestyle on Vulcan Post.

Entrepreneur Samuel Chua takes the concept of “multi-tasking” to a whole new level. The Singaporean co-founded Singapore’s first ‘happy hour’ app while holding down a full-time job and running another tech startup. Named ULO, the new ‘happy hour’ app is a booking platform that offers up to 70 per cent off beauty and lifestyle services during off-peak hours. The time-based discounts are a new spin on conventional promotions in deal apps like Fave, Burpple, and ShopBack.

Time To Get Your Money’s Worth

On ULO, you can instantly reserve appointments at specific timeslots which are heavily discounted. To illustrate, a merchant on ULO can offer a 70 per cent discount for a 2pm slot on a Monday. Subsequently, they can decrease the discount rates by 10 per cent every hour until it hits a 40 per cent discount for a 5pm booking.

ULO Lifestyle App Screens

In-app, all discounts are direct discounts. That means there’s no need to redeem e-vouchers or claim cashback. The discounts listed on the app also apply to all services of the shop, unless otherwise stated. To discover a service, you can browse through merchants listed across seven different beauty and lifestyle categories. ULO also allows you to filter your searches by time and service, which makes it ideal for last-minute bookings.

ULO: A Virtual Standee

Samuel first hit upon the idea for ULO in 2018 when he was going for a haircut at his barber. He realised that he was always being asked to come in during regular business hours (between 9am and 6pm) because shops experienced low footfall while everyone was away at work. Retail shops tend to empty out during off-peak hours so to boost business, Samuel’s barber had a standee outside their shop offering a 30 per cent discount between 2 and 4pm. 

“(But) it made no sense,” says Samuel. “The shop was located on the second floor at a corner, so the standee would miss the regular crowd since it would only be seen by people who walked past your shop.”

Time-based services like barber shops never had this problem addressed. So ULO was launched in response to a “virtual standee”, with far greater reach potential. It’s now dubbed as Singapore’s first “time-based management platform.” The project was piloted in late 2019 and has slowly amassed a growing user base — over 1,800 bookings have been made in-app. Today, it has over 2,100 active monthly users and 293 merchants onboard.

You Can’t Multitask Without The Right Partner

On top of developing ULO, Samuel wears multiple hats running a tech startup, Coconut Lab, while holding down a full-time job at a local coworking startup. Samuel also accredits his work to the faith he has in his right-hand man and co-founder, Chuen Lum Loh (CL). 

The two first met in 2015. At that time, Samuel was pursuing an eight-year career in JLL as a regional real estate consultant. He hired CL to help with a pet project building a real estate website and was impressed by his work. 

“He’s reliable, precise and able to translate business to tech very easily.”

ULO Lifestyle Samuel and CL
CL left, Samuel right / Image Credit: ULO

Dissatisfied with his corporate job, Samuel left his real estate career in 2017 “to try something new” and proposed kickstarting a business to CL. 

“Young people don’t waste time,” Samuel explains. “We wanted to go, so let’s just go.”

The two launched Coconut Lab in 2018, an app and web development company. The company serves clients across the Asia Pacific and employs a lean team of 15 across Singapore and Indonesia. The startup is responsible for ULO’s in-house app development, though the two remain separate entities. Coconut Lab has also developed SwapSwipe, another eco-friendly exchange platform. In 2019, Samuel joined a local coworking startup in their enterprise sales department to drive regional strategy and business development. 

“I wanted to learn from the big boys,” he explains.

Despite the immense effort it must take to run three gigs at once, Samuel is remarkably laid back about his accomplishments. 

“It’s really just time management,” he explains.

He also counted on his strong partnership with CL, who he trusted to run Coconut Labs concurrently. 

“We complement each other,” he surmises.

Growing ULO

Covid-19 has impacted the growth of the app, though it has since bounced back. ULO received over 3,000 monthly average users pre-Covid, which dropped to 500 at the height of the circuit breaker and bounced back to 2,000 to 2,500 users last month.

ULO 2.0
ULO 2.0

More shops have been coming forward asking for inclusion on the platform, says Samuel, adding that off-peak hours will always be a universal problem for retail. Despite the hurdles they face, ULO will be actively expanding. If all goes as planned, ULO will be revamping its user experience and expanding its suite of merchants to include fitness brands and activities. ULO 2.0 is designed for released in the fourth quarter of 2020. Where others might balk at his workload, Samuel is living the dream. 

“I wanted to build something…(entrepreneurship and IT is) what I really enjoyed.”

Introducing ULO Lifestyle: Experience Happy Hour savings without booze!

ULO Lifestyle savings

Enjoy up to 70% off-peak savings on your favourite beauty & lifestyle services

SINGAPORE – If you are familiar with various popular cashback and deals mobile apps, Urban Lifestyle Offers (ULO) is here to offer you more great savings. ULO offers direct time-based discounts to your lifestyle services. There is no better time for consumers to capitalize on this, than during a post-COVID “working from home” (WFH) era.

ULO was designed to help flailing service retailers to focus in optimizing their biggest problem – off-peak periods. Fixed costs continue to be incurred when there are no customers during off-peak hours; in ULO terms – “Happy Hours”. These happy hours discounts will become savings to the consumers, which strikes a win-win deal for both businesses and consumers.

If bars can offer bucket deals off booze during happy hours, surely it can be applied to other time-based services

Samuel Chua, ULO Lifestyle Co-Founder

Savings on everybody’s mind post-COVID

COVID has led to everyone looking to tighten the purse strings, but the lifestyle should not be compromised. With ULO, you can save up to 70% off those regular visits to salons (we see it as essential). Working from home is looking to stay, and you now have the flexibility to enjoy these happy hours!

ULO does not involve often complex cashbacks or terms and conditions for use. Services are offered with a direct discount during off-peak time-slots, to reward you for your time. All you have to do is book your service with the merchant via the mobile app, and enjoy the discount!

ULO Lifestyle a homegrown Singapore start-up

ULO has been piloted since late 2019, and while hit by the COVID slowdown has amassed a rapidly growing user base of more than 2,000 monthly active users and close to 300 shops. While COVID has hit businesses hard, ULO as a homegrown start-up is focused on helping them out. By helping to sell the usually empty timeslots, it helps businesses better optimize their sunk costs, and increase revenue.

Lower revenue is better than no revenue

Samuel Chua, ULO Lifestyle Co-Founder

The next phase of ULO will involve the expansion into a wider range of lifestyle services, as well as outreach to more merchants to help them benefit from what ULO can offer during these difficult times. 

Start your savings journey with ULO Lifestyle by downloading the app on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store.