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Ask HN: can you review my idea, please?

9 points by alouanchi ↗ HN
Hi, I want to have some feedbacks and advice about my idea before to jump onto it. Here it is, able to get good offers from your local hairdressers business matching only your request.

Ex: a user submit a request(style, location, avaibility...).

The hairdressers get the request and make an offers. So the user gets offers matching his need and availability at good price and can choose the most suitable. Saves money and time.

For the hairdresser to fulfill his planning. Gains customers and automates bookings.

Thanks in advance for your help.

16 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 28.6 ms ] thread
andersthue
Sounds like impulse purchases, nothing I would plan ahead on...
josho
Have you considered asking hairdressers if they'd want this?
alouanchi
Good point. It's the next step. But looking how they lose with groupon and other group deal. I hope I am coming with new way to lose less and also they are able to handle butter their offers.

But I agree I have to deal with hairdressers first. But I wanted to know if people want it.

Thanks.

27182818284
This is step 0. Like before HN, talking to the hairstylists is the way to go. In fact, you should be maybe talking to 5-10 hairstylists a day. Seriously. Buy coffee, drinks, maybe lunch and chat them up.
betadreamer
I want to help you so I'm going to be honest. I don't think its a good idea. Maybe i'm not understanding it correctly but how i see it is that this is AirBnb for haircuts.

If so i think there is a contradiction. I think there are 2 types of people who get haircuts. One that goes for cheap and other goes for quality. Both of these are achieved by picking the right salon. Thats why hairdresser works with the salon...

I dont think future of haircut is to remove the middleman of salons. Salons are essential.

I hope this helps.

alouanchi
Thanks for your return. The honesty is all what I am looking for.

What I want to achieve is to be able to book haircut for my suitable time and at the good price in my local area.

betadreamer
hmm down votes. I was just trying to help. I do believe its a valid point though.

Anyways I think in that case what I would recommend is to make a centralized reservation software for the Salons. I think almost every salon I've seen is still using the traditional paper/pencil booking system. How about target them?

alouanchi
I was wondering if I have to use this feature at the beginning. Also I want to check if the offer feature is more atractive. And to see on what I have to focus more.

Maybe I have to review the strategy of the idea and test some models to find the one I should follow.

Thanks for your return and time.

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alouanchi
After reviewing comments and having a small break I think I didn't explain to idea well. When I said hairdresser I meant the salon.

So when customer submits a request salons respond with offers matching the criteria. But booking can be must have feature.

Cheers.

[deleted]
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User9821
1. Who is making the offers? Your average hairdresser is an employee, they have no interest in spending their day managing offers online, and it doesn't offer them the experience they're looking to gain. This means the salon will need to hire another person that can make offers to individuals online, or the owner themselves will need to take on this extra work. This can't be anyone, they need to be familiar with different hairstyles, their difficulty, and rates.

2. How much time does it take to acquire a customer by making offers? What happens if the customer asks questions online? How much is a price for X? Oh, that's too much, what about if I do Y? Would you be willing to lower your offer from $25 to $20? Then, they disappear. I have a feeling they'd waste a lot of time making offers, while seeing little return. The cost is simply too little for the time spent communication with individuals.

3. How does this compare to hiring someone to stand in front of the store waving a sign? As someone else said, haircuts are impulse purchases for a lot of people, so if you have someone standing on the street, telling people walking by that haircuts are 10% off today only, would they bring in more customers then someone online making competing offers? With the sign, at least the person is already standing next to your salon, so they'll convert to customers better than someone online.

4. Who is this for? Most people have a regular hairdresser that they have a relationship with, so I'd think they're unlikely to change. When I relocate to a new city, I just check Google maps for barbershops or salons, and the majority have reviews. I pick one closest, with positive reviews, that focuses on men's hair. That's it.

The idea of businesses making offers to customers isn't a bad one, but I think you need to rethink the niche, hairstyling isn't a business where I could see this working.

Edit: I had to step out for a bit. To expand though, what if you applied this to a different industry, like cars? I could say I'm looking for a 4 door car, max budget X dollars, and local dealers could submit cars they have available with their best offers. Car dealers are pretty competitive, so I think they would be more willing to put forth effort to chase customers than a hairstylist. Also, if you make a sale, you could earn a thousand in commission, instead of $2. I'm not saying it'll work, that was just a general suggestion for why you might want to look towards other markets.

alouanchi
Thanks a lot to point me all these questions.

If you don't mind I will try to answer you.

For Q1. because I will not have a lot of customers (but if I got them I will be more than happy) at the beginning so the hairdressers can handle making offers. Of course I will provide them a system to assist and help them. And because it will be not in real time (at least not at the beginning) so they have a time to do it. And when customers grow I will provide a new way to make offers, by having a pricing calendar. So they can put price by shift time (ex: 9-10 at 15$, 10-11 at 18$...) in advance and update it occasionally.

For Q2: I hope to make it simple. One request to receive differents offers from differents hairdressers matching the request and choose one. But for the question online I did not have a think about it yet. Thanks for it.

For Q3: I agree and disagree with you. But hairdressers are going to make offers only for customers that are looking for. But let's say if I add the real time offers. So this gives the ability to the hairdresser to target only people close to him in real time to fulfill the empty time. But real time will be not the first step but who knows.

For Q4: for anyone looking for good offer matching his avaibility. (Or for regular customers provide booking feature and adding the reward. However I have to review my idea for this. Good point to warn me about the relationship customer-hairdress).

I came up with this idea cause there is many deals in the web but they do not match always my need at that time. But with my idea I wanted to move the search and comparison to the software and local shops. So I have to make one request and got (hope) offers fitting my need.

And again thanks for your feedback.

alouanchi
For your update (edit). To be fairly honest it sounds good too. I think I should have a break and work on it again.

I chose the hairdressing domain because many women around me always speak about beauty and hair style. But from your update maybe I should consider other domains and see if they fit better the concept.

Again a big thanks.