TimeTailor Salon Software Doesn't Encourage Marketplace Participation

Where do marketplaces make a real difference?

This is a category where instant access to large customer bases and low upfront costs compared to opening a store are essential.

High demand aggregation (people shopping around) goes hand in hand with easy comparison that builds trust.

Platforms like Upwork and Fiverr increase visibility for freelancers, reduce the cost of finding customers, and provide reviews and verification.

Extremely useful if you need someone handling discovery, ordering, or delivery, and best for small restaurants or local shops that struggle with logistics on their own.

What are some industries where marketplaces don’t add much value?

Purchase decisions depend on relationships, trust, and long sales cycles. Marketplaces oversimplify complex offerings, contributing to low-value or mismatched leads for small businesses.

This is a situation where the race to the bottom on price, high marketplace fees, and the absence of distinctive branding destroy profits and create a pattern of businesses not being able to differentiate on the market.

Brand identity is everything! Clients expect personalized experiences and marketplaces only cheapen the perception, leading to loss of exclusivity.

In this industry, most clients come back due to the relationship and trust they’re building. A branded website and a salon appointment software are often the best alternatives.

This is how most salon softwares based on marketplace models work:

1. Salons onboard the platform for free or for a low cost

2. Booking links send clients to the platform’s domain rather than the salon’s

3. The platform now has access to your client’s name, email address, phone, preferences, service history, frequency, spending potential, and payment data

4. As a salon owner, you believe you own the customers you serve, but in reality the platform does

5. Looking for endless “one-time” fees, the marketplace starts selling directly to your once loyal clients:

- “Discover new salons near you”

- “10% off your next haircut”

- “What about this stylist nearby?”

6. If a client rebooks through the marketplace (instead of the salon’s personal page), you pay again for a customer you originally brought in

Brand hijacking

In the marketing world, this approach is known as brand hijacking: the platform inserts itself between the salon and its customer, captures the relationship, and then sells access back to the salon. This way, instead of being helpful, the marketplace starts to own the rebooking funnel and the client relationship, setting dependency traps:

Your default booking link is a branded URL for the salon scheduling software, so clients are not actually booking with you.

Your customers have to create an account on the marketplace, so the platform owns their identity.

Reducing the salon’s perceived ownership, reminders are almost never personalised for your business and include the visuals of another company.

You are not their only client, so they recommend other businesses in your area as well.

Your client data is used to market other salons and make profits for other businesses.

The worst part? A marketplace can monetize the same customer twice: the first time when you acquire them organically, and the second time when they sell the client’s next booking (doesn’t matter if it’s with you or another salon) and take a cut.

1. Who owns the customer?

Long story short, the marketplace does.

Ask yourself the following question: “Are loyal clients important?”

If the answer is yes, you should know that marketplaces do not like clients being loyal to a specific salon.

Why?

The marketplace exists and survives by advertising other salons to your once faithful clients. These spaces were created having one goal in mind: optimize commissions and maximize earnings.

2. Deal hunter clients

“There are many customers on marketplaces…”

Yes, but not always the ones you wish for. Think about food delivery or car services, where people look for what’s cheap and quick. The same applies here.

The marketplace becomes a deal hunters’ paradise. With never-ending options, savvy shoppers look for the best deals or discounts available without being interested in who provides them. After taking advantage of the initial promotion, they rarely return.

“But a customer is a customer…”

Yes…and no. Motivated only by cost, while your business is featured on listings, you’ll have to keep lowering your prices to maintain their interest. Your offer gets in direct competition with lower-cost alternatives regardless of quality, making differentiation almost impossible.

3. Profitability

On top of everything else, some marketplaces charge a “one-time fee” that “only” applies to the first booking. As a result, you’ll never receive your full payment. They’ll constantly promote other salons in search of that fee.

4. Commission costs

Cutting into your profits, most platforms charge commissions, transaction fees, and listing fees with paid visibility options. Marketplaces use algorithms that prioritize earning commissions for the platform. As a result, they are incentivised to direct clients to different salons each time, maximising that commission.

5. Customer communication

Many marketplaces don’t share customer data, which limits your ability to control the experience and messaging. This makes it hard to build authentic relationships or upsell services, a problem you won’t face if you use a non-marketplace salon management software that allows direct communication with your clients.

6. Unreliability

Being a space owned by someone else, you have no control over the rules, changes, fee increases, or algorithm updates. As a small business, your visibility and profitability could be impacted while larger vendors are favoured.

7. Branding

Imposing rigid templates for listings and using reviews as the only distinction makes it almost impossible for your vision and skills to stand out. That’s why our salon booking software offers a customized salon website builder.

How is the TimeTailor salon software different?

Instead of promoting the image of a salon marketplace, we focus on helping you create loyal customers based on merit. This means your own website, your own Google Business Listing, and your own salon appointment app. All promoting YOUR own brand!