An end-to-end beauty platform from booking to store operations
At Gratis Beauty, digital transformation does not begin on the screen where the customer books; it runs the whole operation at once — from the store’s shift plan to the specialist’s skills, from the personal package to the payment.
About Gratis Beauty
Gratis Beauty is a professional personal care and beauty centre concept launched in 2017 by Gratis, Türkiye’s popular personal care and cosmetics chain. It offers skin care, manicure and pedicure, hair treatments, make-up, artificial nails, gel polish, brow and lash services and personal care with certified beauty specialists. Set up inside stores or at separate locations, these centres provide a wide range of care and beauty services for women.
An end-to-end beauty platform from booking to store operations
Challenge
Because appointments were taken by phone or in store, customers could not see in real time which store, service, specialist and time slot were available. Managing services of differing duration and required expertise on manual calendars led to clashing appointments, idle slots and rising phone traffic for store teams. Selling beauty services requires a different structure from classic product e-commerce. What is sold is not merely a service; it carries a specific duration, store capacity, staff expertise and a reservation right. Running the purchase of the service and the creation of the appointment in separate systems created a fragmented experience for customer and store alike. Some customers want to confirm their appointment by paying in advance, while others prefer to pay in store at the time of service. Managing online and in-store payments as separate records made it hard to match appointments, collections and service usage. When a beauty specialist’s shift changes or they take leave, all appointment capacity tied to that person is directly affected. When staff planning and the reservation system run separately, slots that cannot actually be served may be opened, or available capacity may stay invisible. Not every employee can deliver every service. Skin care, artificial nails, make-up and hair treatments require different training and skills. Looking only at an employee’s availability created the risk of assigning a service to someone without the right qualification. Holding appointment, employee, shift, leave, skill, package, payment and customer information in different systems made it hard for store managers to see the operation as a whole. Head office and stores working on different data also made it harder to apply common standards and compare performance.
Solution
We moved Gratis Beauty’s service catalogue and reservation flow onto the website and the mobile app. Customers create their appointment by choosing the service, the store, the specialist and the time. The system only shows options that are genuinely available; service duration, store capacity, staff shifts, leave status and specialist skills are automatically included in the availability calculation. Booking, changes, cancellation and notifications are all handled in the same digital flow. We made Gratis Beauty services purchasable on the e-commerce infrastructure. Service catalogue, prices, campaigns, basket, payment, booking and usage were combined into a single commerce flow. Customers can buy a service on web or mobile and create their reservation at the time of purchase or later. The purchased service and its usage status can be followed in the customer account. We connected online payment and in-store payment to the same reservation infrastructure. Customers choose the payment channel that suits them. The store team can see the payment status of the appointment and complete an in-store collection on the same transaction record. We integrated store shift and leave management with the reservation infrastructure. Which store an employee works in, at what hours, their leave and availability automatically update the reservation calendar. When a shift changes or leave is recorded, the available times shown to customers are recalculated accordingly. We built store skill management that defines employees’ training, expertise and the services they can deliver. The reservation engine evaluates not only who is on shift and available, but who holds the qualification required for the chosen service. Service, store, employee and time selection thus merge into a single availability calculation. We brought the stores’ daily operation together on one management platform. Store teams manage the daily appointment calendar, staff planning, leave, customer arrivals, service statuses, package usage and payments from the same screens. Head office teams can reach capacity and demand data by store, service, specialist and period.
Result
Customers can book 24/7 without needing a phone call. Stores see every reservation coming from web, mobile app and in store on a single up-to-date calendar. What the customer is offered always matches the capacity the store can genuinely deliver. Gratis Beauty turned from a chain of stores offering services into an e-commerce brand that also sells its own services digitally. Sale, reservation and completion of the service in store became one uninterrupted, traceable customer journey. Customers keep their freedom to choose how to pay, while store and head office teams can follow appointment and collection on a single record. Even when the sales channel changes, customer, appointment and payment information is not split. The store work plan and the customer appointment calendar now share the same reality. The need for manual calendar corrections falls, and clashing or unservable appointments are prevented before they are created. The right customer, the right service and the right specialist are matched automatically. Skill data becomes operational information that feeds both reservation quality and store capacity planning. We brought the stores’ daily operation together on one management platform. Store teams manage the daily appointment calendar, staff planning, leave, customer arrivals, service statuses, package usage and payments from the same screens. Head office teams can reach capacity and demand data by store, service, specialist and period.