Salons now take pictures of haircuts and hairstyles that they create, and with the customer’s permission, they post those pictures to Instagram and Pinterest to promote their business. At the same time, Salon customers search the web to find pictures of a haircut that they would like, then they show these pictures to their stylist.
What if potential salon customers, while searching for their haircut, could browse pictures of haircuts that happened near them, provided by MINDBODY salons, then could click through to book at those salons? Better yet, what if they could search for hairstyles that happened near them (proximity field), for people with hair like them (color, length fields), with searchable tags (e.g. “bangs”, “ombre”, etc.), then find out who gave that haircut and book it in the app?
A few successful MINDBODY salons could be partnered with to test and iterate on this service. It would seem that some version of this service could be possible once MINDBODY Consumer Web launches. An API solution using Instagram or Pinterest might be the easiest option. If the project succeeds and the website becomes a hit or consumers and subscribers really like it, then we could host or link these pictures directly to the MINDBODY app and populate an easily-searchable online database with them. For now, however, it might be easiest to create and launch some minimum viable version of this service, say, just in San Luis Obispo to work out the kinks and discover which services (Pinterest, Instagram) and SEO work best.
This gives both consumers and subscribers what they want via a software solution. It’s an additional value-added layer of service on top of the connection we already provide. I think these kinds of innovations, though somewhat nuanced to develop, are the “passing game” (to borrow our CEO’s football metaphor) where MINDBODY can increase our value to consumers and subscribers at the same time, and crowdsource the content. If this gets iterated on and works, it’s trackable and can be modified and optimized, and it’s infinitely scalable at relatively little cost.