Should I Build It Should I Build It
21 Apr 2025
Calendar Productivity

haircut schedule manager time-saver customers people calendar sheet ...

...barbershop beauty

Confidence
Engagement
Net use signal
Net buy signal

Idea type: Swamp

The market has seen several mediocre solutions that nobody loves. Unless you can offer something fundamentally different, you’ll likely struggle to stand out or make money.

Should You Build It?

Don't build it.

Your are here

You're entering a crowded space with your haircut scheduling manager idea. We found 20 similar products, which gives us high confidence that this is a well-defined category, but it also means there's significant competition. The engagement for these similar products is low, with an average of only 1 comment per product, suggesting that existing solutions haven't quite captured users' hearts. There are plenty of "mediocre solutions that nobody loves" out there. This puts you squarely in what we call the 'Swamp' category. To succeed, you'll need to offer something fundamentally different to avoid getting bogged down in the existing competition. The provided metrics indicate neutral signals regarding user willingness to use or buy such products.

Recommendations

  1. Given the existing competition, thoroughly research why current haircut scheduling solutions aren't resonating with users. Look closely at the criticism summaries of similar products and take notes. Identify the gaps and pain points that you can uniquely address.
  2. Instead of broadly targeting all barbershops and salons, narrow your focus to a specific niche that's currently underserved. For example, do mobile barbers have specific scheduling needs that aren't being met? Identify a group with very particular requirements that are not covered by other software.
  3. Before building a complete, standalone solution, consider creating tools or integrations that enhance existing scheduling platforms. This could be a plugin or add-on that addresses a specific pain point, allowing you to test the market without a full-scale launch. Also, Perceny's launch saw questions on commission structure; perhaps address commission-related scheduling complexities.
  4. Explore adjacent problems within the beauty and barber industry that might be more promising. Could you focus on inventory management, customer relationship management, or marketing tools specifically tailored to these businesses? Are there other issues not being handled by the current products?
  5. Consider conducting user interviews with barbers and salon owners to understand their current scheduling processes and the challenges they face. This will provide valuable insights into the unmet needs in the market and help you refine your product vision. Try to understand if their current solutions are manual (calendars, sheets, etc), software, or both, and try to understand if the software they use is good or bad.
  6. Given the fact that 'Built an alert tool for barber appointments' received some criticism that it was worked on for too long before being shared, focus on a quick and dirty MVP and get it out there. Don't fall for the 'build it and they will come' trap. Ratibba's launch saw a comment of "Good Job brother" -- avoid this type of 'supportive' audience at all costs, and focus on true and ruthless feedback.

Questions

  1. What are the specific pain points that barbers and salon owners experience with current scheduling methods, and how can your solution address those pain points in a fundamentally different way?
  2. Given the low engagement with existing solutions, what innovative features or approaches can you incorporate to create a truly engaging and valuable scheduling experience for users?
  3. How can you validate your product idea and gather user feedback early in the development process to avoid building a solution that nobody wants or needs?

Your are here

You're entering a crowded space with your haircut scheduling manager idea. We found 20 similar products, which gives us high confidence that this is a well-defined category, but it also means there's significant competition. The engagement for these similar products is low, with an average of only 1 comment per product, suggesting that existing solutions haven't quite captured users' hearts. There are plenty of "mediocre solutions that nobody loves" out there. This puts you squarely in what we call the 'Swamp' category. To succeed, you'll need to offer something fundamentally different to avoid getting bogged down in the existing competition. The provided metrics indicate neutral signals regarding user willingness to use or buy such products.

Recommendations

  1. Given the existing competition, thoroughly research why current haircut scheduling solutions aren't resonating with users. Look closely at the criticism summaries of similar products and take notes. Identify the gaps and pain points that you can uniquely address.
  2. Instead of broadly targeting all barbershops and salons, narrow your focus to a specific niche that's currently underserved. For example, do mobile barbers have specific scheduling needs that aren't being met? Identify a group with very particular requirements that are not covered by other software.
  3. Before building a complete, standalone solution, consider creating tools or integrations that enhance existing scheduling platforms. This could be a plugin or add-on that addresses a specific pain point, allowing you to test the market without a full-scale launch. Also, Perceny's launch saw questions on commission structure; perhaps address commission-related scheduling complexities.
  4. Explore adjacent problems within the beauty and barber industry that might be more promising. Could you focus on inventory management, customer relationship management, or marketing tools specifically tailored to these businesses? Are there other issues not being handled by the current products?
  5. Consider conducting user interviews with barbers and salon owners to understand their current scheduling processes and the challenges they face. This will provide valuable insights into the unmet needs in the market and help you refine your product vision. Try to understand if their current solutions are manual (calendars, sheets, etc), software, or both, and try to understand if the software they use is good or bad.
  6. Given the fact that 'Built an alert tool for barber appointments' received some criticism that it was worked on for too long before being shared, focus on a quick and dirty MVP and get it out there. Don't fall for the 'build it and they will come' trap. Ratibba's launch saw a comment of "Good Job brother" -- avoid this type of 'supportive' audience at all costs, and focus on true and ruthless feedback.

Questions

  1. What are the specific pain points that barbers and salon owners experience with current scheduling methods, and how can your solution address those pain points in a fundamentally different way?
  2. Given the low engagement with existing solutions, what innovative features or approaches can you incorporate to create a truly engaging and valuable scheduling experience for users?
  3. How can you validate your product idea and gather user feedback early in the development process to avoid building a solution that nobody wants or needs?

  • Confidence: High
    • Number of similar products: 20
  • Engagement: Low
    • Average number of comments: 1
  • Net use signal: 15.6%
    • Positive use signal: 15.6%
    • Negative use signal: 0.0%
  • Net buy signal: 0.0%
    • Positive buy signal: 0.0%
    • Negative buy signal: 0.0%

This chart summarizes all the similar products we found for your idea in a single plot.

The x-axis represents the overall feedback each product received. This is calculated from the net use and buy signals that were expressed in the comments. The maximum is +1, which means all comments (across all similar products) were positive, expressed a willingness to use & buy said product. The minimum is -1 and it means the exact opposite.

The y-axis captures the strength of the signal, i.e. how many people commented and how does this rank against other products in this category. The maximum is +1, which means these products were the most liked, upvoted and talked about launches recently. The minimum is 0, meaning zero engagement or feedback was received.

The sizes of the product dots are determined by the relevance to your idea, where 10 is the maximum.

Your idea is the big blueish dot, which should lie somewhere in the polygon defined by these products. It can be off-center because we use custom weighting to summarize these metrics.

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