Beauty industry software that unifies booking, retail, and CRM
Custom booking + retail + CRM apps for multi-location salon and spa groups or beauty DTC brands. Senior engineer on subscription, $3,499/mo.
Who this is for
Multi-location salon or spa group owner, or beauty DTC brand founder, where booking, retail, and customer communications live on 3+ systems with no unified lifetime-value view.
The pain today
- Booking, retail, and CRM data live on 3+ systems
- No unified customer lifetime-value view across service and product
- Staff cannot see a customer's retail history at check-in
- Marketing lives on a different tool with incomplete data
- Inventory between service use and retail sale is untracked
The outcome you get
- Custom beauty app on subscription at $3,499/mo
- Booking + retail + CRM unified in 10 to 14 weeks
- Integration with existing booking platform (Vagaro, Boulevard)
- Unified customer profile with service and retail history
- Multi-location support across group
Beauty-industry software gaps
Three places most beauty operators bleed revenue. One: booking data (Vagaro, Boulevard) and retail data (Shopify or in-salon POS) are separate systems, so customer LTV is not visible. Two: staff tools at the chair or front desk cannot see retail history, missing upsell opportunities. Three: marketing automation runs off email only, missing in-salon service signals. Each is an integration problem rather than a platform problem. Custom apps layer unified views on top of existing booking and retail systems without replacing either.
Common apps I build
Unified customer profiles (service history + retail purchases + preferences + notes). Staff tools (check-in with full customer context, retail recommendation, note taking). Inventory management (retail stock, service-use products, vendor ordering). Loyalty with service and retail tier rewards. Brand-specific marketing automation based on unified data. Multi-location reporting. For beauty DTC brands (hair care, skincare, cosmetics), replace generic commerce platforms with brand-specific flows. Each 4 to 8 weeks of work.
Integrations (Stripe, email/SMS, inventory)
Booking: Vagaro, Boulevard, Square Appointments, Fresha. Retail: Shopify or the booking platform's retail module. CRM: native in booking platform or separate (Klaviyo, Mailchimp). SMS: Attentive, Postscript, or booking platform's built-in. Inventory: the booking platform for service-use products, Shopify for retail. Integration pattern: booking platform stays as source of truth for appointments; retail data pulls from Shopify; CRM gets unified view via custom app. Multi-system integration is the bulk of the work.
Pricing and engagement model
Standard $3,499/mo. Pro $4,500/mo. For multi-location groups with heavy integration work, Pro during initial build. 14-day money-back guarantee. Cancel anytime. 100 percent code ownership under Work Made for Hire. Hosting cost modest — $100 to $500/mo for most operators. For brands with both a DTC ecommerce storefront and physical salons/spas, the custom app unifies both sides — typical 10 to 14 weeks of initial build.
Case: LAK Embalagens — brand-heavy catalog playbook
LAK Embalagens: B2B manufacturer rebuild with catalog-first approach, quote funnel, and strong brand expression. Bounce dropped 45 percent, impressions 3x'd, rankings landed top three. Stack: React, Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS. For beauty brands, the same discipline applies to product catalogs, service pages, and internal dashboards. Strong brand expression plus functional depth is possible on one codebase. LAK showed the pattern for B2B; beauty brands running the same structural approach see similar results.
When off-the-shelf (Vagaro, Boulevard) is enough
For salons and spas under $500k in revenue, or single-location operators, Vagaro or Boulevard plus a Shopify retail layer handles most needs. Custom app work pays back when the group is growing (5+ locations or $2M+ in revenue) and the data fragmentation creates material friction. My target beauty clients are multi-location groups and DTC brands at scale. For smaller operators, vendor configuration and tight integration (sometimes via Zapier) is the right call.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Turned a B2B manufacturer into a digital showroom
Designed and developed a high-performance institutional website to showcase packaging solutions and generate qualified leads.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- Can you integrate with Vagaro or Boulevard?
- Yes. Vagaro's API supports appointments, clients, services, and products. Boulevard similar. Integration pattern: booking platform stays as source of truth; custom app reads appointments and clients, writes back unified customer data. For multi-location groups running different booking platforms across locations, we handle integration heterogeneity inside the custom app. Typical integration work: 3 to 5 weeks.
- How do we handle retail and service inventory together?
- Retail stock typically lives in Shopify or the booking platform's retail module. Service-use products (backbar) live in the booking platform or a dedicated inventory tool. Custom app can unify the view and trigger vendor orders when either falls below thresholds. For brands with manufactured products, a deeper vendor management flow extends this to production and QA. Scope depends on operational complexity.
- Can the app support multiple brands under one group?
- Yes. Multi-brand support (one holding company, multiple branded concepts) handles per-brand customer data, per-brand reporting, per-brand marketing, while allowing cross-brand insights at the group level. For groups with 2 to 5 brands, this adds 2 to 4 weeks to the core build. For larger multi-brand organisations, the architecture scales further with minor adjustments.
- How do you handle email/SMS marketing?
- Klaviyo or Mailchimp for email, Attentive or Postscript for SMS. Custom app feeds unified customer signals (service bookings, retail purchases, preferences) into the marketing platform so segmentation reflects the full customer relationship. For brands with serious marketing sophistication, deeper segmentation from unified data drives materially better campaign performance. Integration is 2 to 3 weeks during the engagement.
- What about loyalty?
- Loyalty tied to both service and retail. Customers earn points on both channels; rewards unlock across both. For brands with tiered loyalty (bronze/silver/gold), tier status updates based on 12-month spend across service and retail. For operators without a loyalty program today, we build a simple points system first, expand based on what works. Typical build: 2 to 4 weeks for solid loyalty tied to unified data.
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