The founders of the first-of-its-kind NYC hair loss clinic cite Boulevard software as one of the secrets to their success

Hair growth clinic Great Many first opened the doors to its New York City location in June 2024. Founded by Michael Pollak and Steve Klebanow, Great Many specializes in hair loss treatment, an area of the self-care industry that has remained largely untapped. Their vision: A “home for hair growth” led by medical professionals that combines products and services to create bespoke roadmaps to hair regrowth for every individual client.

Great Many isn’t Pollak’s or Klebanow’s first foray into self-care entrepreneurship. Pollak founded Heyday, a NYC-based skincare clinic and Boulevard customer, in 2015; the business is still thriving today across the country. Klebanow spent nearly a decade guiding  Omnichannel strategy at legendary beauty conglomerate The Estée Lauder Companies before co-founding Haar & Co. barbershop, also a Boulevard customer, with his longtime barber. Naturally, the duo has learned a lot about running a self-care business — particularly when it comes to the software that keeps day-to-day operations humming. Here’s why Pollak and Klebanow keep choosing Boulevard and how it directly impacts revenue at Great Many.

A modern interface that’s easy to use

Michael Pollak has been using Boulevard since his time at Heyday, but it wasn’t his first brush with self-care software. Heyday originally ran on a different platform, but Pollak found it lacking in terms of design and user experience. “Your end users are folks in a studio who don’t sit at a computer all day long,” he said. “So user experience is super, super important.” Boulevard, by comparison, offered a more intuitive interface, which “certainly attracted us to the platform.” Pollak also called out Boulevard’s modern design, joking, “It looks like it was designed now instead of 1996 like a lot of your competitors.”

Klebanow cited the fact that Boulevard is constantly iterating and adding features based on customer feedback. “The fact that there is a proper feature roadmap and not one feature a year, that's a big differentiator for us.” This way, Boulevard can continue to support businesses as they scale and their needs change.

“Coming from Heyday, there was definitely a desire to have more robust forms,” Pollak added. He said that Great Many’s clinicians were very impressed with Boulevard’s HIPAA-compliant forms. “Our clinicians are like, ‘This is amazing.’ “It’s very dialed-in versus medical software which can be super outdated and kind of overbuilt for something like our use case.”

Finally, Klebanow said that “the stability of the platform” was a major plus. “Bells and whistles are great, but the most important thing is that you can trust the platform and it does what you need for 95% of your use cases, which is what Boulevard provides us.”

Reports that go deeper

When discussing Boulevard features that contribute to Great Many’s overall revenue, Klebanow was quick to mention the reporting feature. In-depth reports allow self-care business owners to take a closer look at business performance and analyze what’s working and what’s not — without the hours of administrative work it takes to manually capture this data.

“Those are really helpful in answering questions like ‘Who are the right segments of customers?’ ‘How do we retarget people who maybe haven't been here in a while?’ We use reports not just  to get top-of-funnel leads in, but to nurture the folks who are already in the system.”

Next-level communication and support

When it comes to communicating with clients, Great Many’s founders are big fans of Boulevard’s text messaging capabilities. “We love the text message feature,” Pollak said. “That's one that's super helpful in terms of communicating with clients and ensuring that people who have booked appointments are confirmed and ready to come. I actually had a salon manager come in to experience Great Many, and he was asking, ‘Where do you guys text us from? Should I get another platform for texting?’ I said, ‘If you’re using Boulevard, it’s all in one platform.’”

And it’s not just communication between Great Many and its clients that Pollak and Klebanow appreciate; they also know that the Boulevard team is always on hand to offer support. “You can actually reach people who are building the software,” Pollak said. “You’re going to get the help you need in time. We run off a schedule, and if there are issues or delays, it directly impacts revenue and everything. So to be able to get knowledgeable help in a timely fashion is certainly something that’s important to us.”

Pollak and Klebanow have big plans for the future of Great Many. They’ll soon launch a product line and telemedicine business to reach clients outside of the New York area, and eventually they want to have multiple studios in key locations throughout the United States. No matter where the future takes them, Boulevard will be with them every step of the way.