A six-branch salon franchise was being run from spreadsheets and a fragile off-the-shelf tool. Axlume rebuilt the entire operational backbone as a single, role-aware system — one design language across three surfaces, serving four distinct roles.
Our client is a multi-branch salon franchise operating six locations across a European market. As the group scaled, the systems holding it together — spreadsheets and a generic, off-the-shelf management tool — stopped keeping up. Axlume was brought in to redesign the entire operational backbone as a single, role-aware system.
The brief was not a cosmetic refresh. It was a structural redesign spanning three surfaces and four roles — a Super Admin hub for the owner’s network-wide view, a Branch Admin platform built around how a single salon actually runs, a mobile companion for managers on the floor, and a customer-facing app for booking and retail.
The franchise was managing six salons on a web-based legacy application that was technically fragile and visually dated. Appointments, sales, schedules, and inventory lived across disconnected modules and manual spreadsheets, with no unified layer tying them together.
The owner had no real-time, network-wide view of performance. Branch managers juggled separate screens for bookings, transactions, scheduling, and stock — with no single place to run a day. There was no visual employee-performance tracking, no cross-branch agenda control, no loyalty or package creation, and no role-aware personalization.
The existing tool complicated the one workflow that mattered most — the agenda — and offered little beyond it. Comparing branches, spotting a top performer, or launching a promotion all meant leaving the system and rebuilding the answer by hand.
The instinct with management software is to add more screens. We did the opposite — we mapped every task each role actually performs, then collapsed them into the fewest, clearest surfaces possible. Four roles, three surfaces, one consistent system.
We documented the full operational reality of the legacy system — every screen a manager touched, every spreadsheet that filled its gaps, and every report rebuilt by hand. We mapped the work of four distinct roles — the franchise owner, branch managers, floor and reception staff, and the salon’s own customers — and the failure points were clear within the first week.
We anchored the redesign on the people who use it: the Franchise Owner, who needs the entire network in one view; the Branch Manager, who needs to run a full day from a single page; reception staff working the floor; and the customer booking from a phone. Every information-architecture decision was tested against one of those four.
We built a comprehensive sitemap and a role-based access model before a single screen was styled — mapping operations, employees, services, warehouse, bookings, reports, and marketing into one consistent hierarchy. That hierarchy then had to hold across three surfaces — a desktop admin platform, a mobile admin companion, and a customer-facing app — all sharing one design language.
The system was delivered as a production SaaS platform — a web admin platform, a native admin companion, and a customer app, all sharing one design system, with OTP-verified client onboarding, real-time analytics, an agenda engine, a point-of-sale transaction flow, and full inventory and warehouse management.
Rolled out across the branch network with role-aware onboarding. Each surface exposes only what its user needs — the owner sees the network, the manager sees the day, the customer sees their next appointment.
A network-wide command center for the owner — real-time revenue, bookings, stock, and branch performance across every location, with drill-downs into any single branch, brand, or product.
A role-focused control surface that lets a single manager run a salon end to end — agenda, accounts, shelf, cashbook, and reception — without ever leaving the panel.
The core of the day. Instant appointment views, granular booking control, multi-layered filters by service, staff, and timeframe, plus lock, edit, reminder, and approval flows on every booking.
An integrated point-of-sale built for the salon counter — services and products in one cart, regional VAT handled automatically, multiple payment and document types, and on-the-spot client and employee feedback capture.
End-to-end product management — brands, categories, barcodes, buying and selling cost, stock levels, minimum-stock alerts, and cross-branch stock requests, all governed from a single warehouse view.
Employee accounts, duty scheduling, appointment history, and visual performance ranking — turning staff management from a spreadsheet into a measurable, comparable system.
A salon doesn’t run from a desk. The admin companion app brings the essentials of the web platform to the floor — a live dashboard, the cross-branch agenda, and granular filtering — so managers can run the day from between clients.
The fourth surface faces outward. Customers get a warm, branded app to discover services and premium products, view rich detail with assigned stylists and durations, and check out — including a self-pickup retail flow that turns the salon into a storefront.
The redesign replaced a fragmented stack of spreadsheets and a fragile legacy tool with a single, role-aware system. The owner gained a real-time, network-wide view they never had; branch managers gained one surface to run an entire day; and customers gained a branded app to book and buy from.
What changed operationally:
Specific performance metrics are held under NDA. Contact us directly for a detailed brief.
Designing a single system for four opposite users is the hard part. The owner needs breadth — every branch, brand, and product at a glance. The manager needs depth — one branch, one day, every action a tap away. The customer needs simplicity — find, book, pay. Forcing them into the same screens would have failed all of them.
We resolved it with one shared design system expressed through role-tuned information architectures across three surfaces. Common components — tables, charts, agenda blocks, transaction cards, product tiles — behave consistently everywhere, so it feels like one product. But what each role sees, and how deep they can go, is governed by a strict role-based access model defined before any screen was designed.
It was built for its market from the ground up — a single currency throughout, automatic regional VAT handling, local tax and digital-identity fields in client and company onboarding, and OTP-verified client creation. The result is a system that behaves correctly under the real conditions of a six-branch salon network — not a demo that looks good in a screenshot.
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