Product Consulting and First-Release Planning for a Beauty Services Software Startup

Summary

A US startup founded by beauty industry professionals wanted to build an all-in-one web portal connecting the sector's key players. INNERLUXES created the product vision, built clickable prototypes, and delivered a costed first-release implementation plan — giving the startup everything it needed to pitch investors and start building.

About the Client

The Client is a promising US startup launched by a team of experienced beauty industry professionals. Its product is an all-in-one web portal that connects key beauty industry stakeholders — beauty services providers, consumers, beauty product manufacturers, and educators — and combines:

• A beauty product marketplace for businesses and individual customers.
• A job search platform for beauty professionals.
• A beauty services search platform for consumers.
• A social network for beauty professionals to promote their services and gather reviews.

The Client engaged INNERLUXES for its IT consulting experience and portfolio of successful projects, to elicit the requirements, create a product vision and feature list, build a prototype, and prepare an implementation plan.

Product Vision, Prototypes, and a First-Release Plan

• Product vision. The INNERLUXES business analysis team analyzed the beauty services applications market and the Client's business needs to form a comprehensive product vision, then defined the platform's user roles (beauty professionals, beauty salons, consumers, suppliers, and admins) and feature list.
• Full-featured prototype. The Client received wireframes and a clickable full-featured product prototype covering a services module (search providers, book appointments, leave reviews), a job offers module (post offers and CVs, search jobs and candidates), an e-store module (sell services, run promotions, review and buy products), an education module (view tutorials and book paid courses), and a promotion module (educators promote courses, professionals advertise services).
• First-release prototype. To shorten time-to-market and gather early feedback from real users, INNERLUXES recommended building the product in small iterations starting from the minimum viable features, with the services module as the functional core — and delivered a clickable first-release prototype covering that module.
• Implementation plan. INNERLUXES provided a first-release implementation plan with cost and timeline estimates, required resources, expected deliverables, and an optimal tech stack. Satisfied with the plan, the Client decided to continue the development with INNERLUXES.

Key Outcomes for the Client

• A solution concept to support the platform's successful implementation and user adoption.
• A clear visualization of the platform's capabilities through a clickable full-featured prototype.
• The means to pitch investors and attract partners with a clickable first-release prototype.
• A path to create and launch the platform quickly, thanks to the detailed implementation plan.

Technologies and Tools

Frontend (JavaScript, HTML, CSS), React.js, MySQL, PostgreSQL.