How ClassBento delivers mindfulness to masses
Inside the fast-growing platform offering classes and workshops - and how Afterpay provided an alternative to discounting.
John Tabari on ClassBento’s growth:
How mental health and mindfulness inspired ClassBento
Expansion in to the UK
How Afterpay has helped grow the business
It was in 2016 that John Tabari first started taking mental health seriously.
At the time, he was working at The ICONIC - back then, a fast-growing fashion start-up - and noticed that his team was struggling with burnout. It was that year, too, that Tabari became a father - introducing him to a whole new world of sleep deprivation - and also watched his beloved grandmother grapple with dementia.
“Mental health became highlighted in a way that it never had been before in my life,” he recalls.
“Mental health became highlighted in a way that it never had been before."
To support his team and encourage mindfulness, Tabari began organising arts and crafts workshops. “As I was organising these workshops, I realised that classes aren’t always on a good time, and great teachers aren’t always great marketers - so all this made me realise there was a way to make great, fun, exciting workshops more accessible [and] to ultimately make mindfulness more accessible as people immerse themselves.”
And, with that, the seeds for ClassBento, an online marketplace offering workshops, classes and experiences, were sown.
Fast forward six years and ClassBento - named after Japanese Bento boxes, which encourage diners to try new things - offers 10,000 classes, ranging from calligraphy to flower-arranging. The business has 300 per cent year-on-year revenue growth and has begun expanding into the US and UK.
“At The ICONIC, working alongside my co-founder Iain Wang, we got a taste for high-growth start-ups - we saw the good, the bad - and just how it could really disrupt an industry.”
At the heart of ClassBento’s success is the teachers and small business owners who run classes and workshops, and during the pandemic ClassBento launched a new platform to help teachers send kits to their students and hold interactive Zoom workshops.
ClassBento began offering Afterpay early on, and Tabari says that it has played an important role in the business’ growth, says Tabari.
“Afterpay has given us the solution to help people do something creative at a price that works for them in the way they want to pay,” Tabari says. “Classes are $80 and up, which is a lot compared to going to the cinema, so the split payments really help.”
From the beginning, Tabari and Wang were determined not to discount, and instead chose to offer Afterpay as a way to make classes and workshops more accessible. “We particularly noticed an uptake with Millennials, because it’s the natural fit for their careers and a stage when they’re really needing to get into mindfulness - and Afterpay has made it easier for them to do that with us.”
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