Our Story

Good at beauty. In charge of your business.

Most salon owners start with a skill they love. Hair. Beauty. Making someone feel good when they look in the mirror.

Then come the other jobs. Managing a team. Working out costs. Filling quiet days. Somehow becoming a marketing department between appointments.

We built Zolmi to help with that side of salon life, too.

A salon, a friendship and something of our own

Our story reaches back to a small hair salon in east London in 2004. Paul, our co-founder, was looking after its marketing and saw how much work went into keeping things running behind the scenes.

Years later, Paul and Bartek worked in finance and marketing leadership roles at a large fitness chain. They became close friends, worked well together and shared an ambition: to build something of their own. Something they could look back on and say: we made that.

Paul had already been working on Belliata, connecting beauty businesses with people looking for somewhere to book. An early version of the software was available in 2018, with a free plan.

Together, we created Zolmi as a separate brand for salon businesses. In 2020, we set up our company, Umov, and kept building.

Practical can be pretty

Our goal was straightforward: make the daily work easier and help owners feel more confident running their businesses.

That means an easy calendar. A booking experience that feels like your salon. Messages that sound like you. And useful information you don’t need a finance background to understand.

We care about how it looks, too. You spend enough of your day looking at a screen. It should be clear, inviting and have a little personality.

Our clients keep changing how we think

Some of our most useful conversations start with a small request. Better appointment notes. An easier way to message a client. Fewer clicks to finish something you do twenty times a day.

Our staff productivity reports developed through working with clients. Those conversations also raised a bigger question: how do you know whether the business is doing well?

A full calendar tells you you’re busy. It doesn’t tell you the whole story.

We help owners look beyond appointments to understand where time and money go, and what needs attention. Client questions also inspired Bartek to start making video guides. Sometimes another feature helps. Sometimes you need someone to explain something clearly.

Your brand. Your clients. Room to grow.

We want your clients to remember your name.

That means helping you build your own online presence and making it easy for people to find you and book directly.

We’re self-funded, and feedback from the businesses using Zolmi helps guide what we build next. We believe in clear pricing, listening properly and respecting that every salon has its own personality and way of working.

We want you to stay because Zolmi keeps helping your business. Because you feel supported. Because it’s worth it.

That’s the kind of business we set out to build.