Intro

There are plenty of marketplaces on the Internet where you can buy anything you can imagine. E-books from Amazon, nice accessories from Etsy, or some collection vinyl from eBay.

But what about beauty? Don’t you think that it would be great to have a platform where you can find a hairdresser or a barber with good ratings and reviews? Or maybe you want to have perfect makeup for a very special day, like a wedding. Also, you can visit a salon or order the service to be done at your place. There are many other options for different features that we can imagine now, and all of them can be accumulated on one beauty platform. Sounds good? Let’s look inside!

Niche

Why the beauty, by the way? In the last few years, e-commerce has occupied bigger and bigger parts of all markets, and the beauty market is no exception.

A bit of boring statistics. According to Statista, revenue in the beauty and personal care market will amount to US$571.10 billion in 2023. The market is expected to grow annually by 3.80% from 2023 to 2027. Also, 27.5% of total revenue will be generated through online sales by 2023. It’s about US$157 billion!

The chart of expected growth for the beauty market

Some of the drivers of such growth are customers’ continuous seeking of a variety of treatments, including cuts, highlights, and straightening, that require skillful barbers and hairstylists. Besides, the male customer base is growing (thanks God for that 😄).

As the market is growing, it definitely needs new sales channels. And here is the beauty e-commerce platform. The solution aims to bring together the best practices of e-commerce and beauty services. This includes features like online payments and bookings, convenient listings and sorting, one-click orders, and transparent review systems. Additionally, the solution will offer the best beauty content, products, and services. By combining these elements, users can enjoy a seamless and comprehensive experience when shopping for beauty products and services online. It also reduces costs for service providers and customers, which makes the service even more affordable and expands the target audience.

It’s a win-win, as you can see. And it is an opportunity for you to get a piece of that pie.

Building

You decide to build your own platform to serve beauty service consumers. How should it look? What should it contain?

Your platform must include a few required modules to make customers’ and service providers’ journeys smooth and enjoyable.

First of all, a convenient listing

Listing example in Norwegian hairdresser marketplace https://www.thedaba.com/

Listing example in beauty and health service marketplace https://www.sasu.no/

It must be easy to look through services, providers, or products at a glance. All the important data has to be visible without additional action from the customer. The main services of the provider, their name, short introduction, and rating should all be taken into account. The easier and more convenient the user finds this interface, the higher the chance of getting a satisfied customer into the system.

Order flow

When we find a provider we would like to buy a service from, we want to order a service. It might be pretty straightforward or have some conditions according to your business logic, but it should remain as easy for the customer to perform as possible.

Booking flow example in beauty and health service marketplace https://www.sasu.no/

Booking flow example in Norwegian hairdresser marketplace https://www.thedaba.com/

The idea of the flow is to ask the customer all the required information for their coming booking and gently proceed to payment.

Chat

It’s quite often the case when a customer or a provider wants to clarify some questions before accepting an order, especially in the beauty industry. A customer might have a specific request, a provider needs to be sure of the set of requested services, plans have changed at the last minute and the booking should be rescheduled, etc. You definitely need a chat feature to allow users to manage such actions. It should be powerful enough to be able to share images, notify users about new messages, and be mobile device-friendly.

Chat example in Norwegian hairdresser marketplace https://www.thedaba.com/

Mobile first chat example in art social marketplace The Conart

Payment

When a user finally finds the service they want to buy, discusses everything in the chat, and goes through the order flow, it’s finally time to pay. Your platform has to provide one or more available ways to pay. It might be a credit card payment, PayPal, cryptocurrency, or anything else. But it should exist. Also, the whole process should be secure for the customers not to lose their money and for the platform itself not to become a victim of fraud. Fortunately, the majority of online payment systems provide the required level of security and keep you and your customers safe during the whole payment process.

Other, but not least, modules

Besides the described modules, there should be many less obvious but necessary modules, such as sign-in/sign-up, notifications (sms, email, etc.), an admin panel for service providers and super admins, a review system, you name it.

Manual things

In addition to all the tech businesses, there is a list of management businesses.

• For example, you might need to manage and moderate the system to provide the best services to your customers and service providers.
• Payment handling also requires your attention. Get payments, make refunds when needed, and handle fund transfers to service providers.
• There are also customers who you need to communicate with if they have issues.
• Analytics and reporting will be required to show the productivity of service providers and the system itself.

It sounds a bit more complicated than in the beginning, huh? But the solution exists.

The solution

As always, there are numerous options. You can start with Shopify, WooCommerce, or OpenCart, for example. They vary in price, some of them are totally free, but the approach is quite the same. You build your own marketplace using some provided functionality and additional plug-ins, which are also paid or free with zero coding. As a result, you get a fully functioning system with limited flexibility and customization, which can be no problem at all on a small scale.

But your idea might be so unique that none of the existing systems meet your requirements. Or hopefully, your business grows, and you can decide that it’s time to break those flexibility limitations you had with the no-code system and build something custom according to your exact needs. And the proper decision here is to use professional code to build the product from scratch. It is definitely way more expensive, but it also allows you to have unlimited control over your system. And if you are visionary and persistent enough, it will greatly improve your product.

It is a classical way of building a marketplace. But are there any alternatives? Yes there are!

Modern alternative

There is a ready-to-go system for marketplaces that contains all the modules described above and even more to help you start your beauty marketplace instantly. And it’s not a box application with a rigid framework. Actually, it has the launching ease of a box solution, but its flexibility equals bespoke-developed systems. This is the next-generation marketplace itself.

The next generation here is in the approach of how it is built and how it works. It is the microapps solutions that the Fleexy team provides. It’s an approach of combining micro-applications into one application. The library of microapps is huge and continues to grow. It contains all the microapps explained above and allows you to start a beauty marketplace amazingly quickly. Moreover, you get full control and flexibility over your system without spending months and a fortune on development.

As a result, this approach is worth considering as an alternative to creating your MVP and then scaling it into a sustainable business.

Meet the solution: fleexy.

Conclusion

In the constantly growing markets, there is always room for everybody who is adventurous enough to run their own startup. If you feel that the beauty industry around you lacks some convenient tech products and you want to change it, it’s time to act. Fasten the belt and break into this world.

Links:

• Chart of revenue in the beauty and personal care market

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