Management system for a hair salon chain: from a notebook to live control
Pelokitos, 20 kids' hair salons in three countries, left the notebook behind: the owner sees live which haircut is underway and who does it, 99.9% on record.
Twenty salons, three countries and what mattered written by hand
Pelokitos is a chain of 20 kids' hair salons: 13 in Argentina, 6 in Miami and 1 in Uruguay, with thirty years in the trade. It had a desktop program that recorded the sale, but control lived somewhere else. When a stylist was alone, haircuts went into a notebook. Bookings were taken by phone. The till and the day's notes were written as free text. And to know how a shop was doing, the owner had to check shop by shop or ask: there was no chain view and no daily summary. We built a management system for the whole chain around one idea: everything that happens in a shop is recorded as it happens, with a name attached. Today the owner sees on his phone which haircut is underway in each chair and who is doing it; everyone on the team has their own account, with their clock-in and their monthly target; families have their own account, check themselves in by scanning a QR code at the shop and book online, with prices that drop in the quiet hours; and the cardboard prepaid pack became part of that account. Before designing, we surveyed how the work was done:
- The haircut, in a notebookWith a stylist alone, nobody entered anything in the system: it went into a notebook, and when online bookings arrived they got mixed up with the people waiting. Between 40 and 48% of records were only opened at checkout.
- Dirty, incomplete or missing dataEvery visit had to be typed in again and customers couldn't enter anything themselves. With a queue waiting, the phone went in as 1111111111: 30% of phone numbers were invalid and 25% of people were duplicates. It wasn't the employee's fault: it was the system's.
- The till, as free textCash, complaints and late arrivals, written by hand shop by shop. Overages and shortages had no control; in Miami there was no till count on any day.
- The prepaid pack, on cardFour haircuts on a hand-stamped card, entered twice at the till. In Miami, a card file by letter that the manager went through by hand.
- No bookings in the systemBookings were given by phone or on the spot. There was no online booking and no way to move people to the empty hours.
What the owner asked for: knowing who works on what
Before writing a line, we worked with the owners, walked the shops and opened up the previous system from the inside: three separate databases, one server and twenty years of data. In late May, the owner put in writing what he needed to see to run the chain. Almost nothing on that list was a sales figure: they were control questions. What time each person came in and left. How much each stylist produced over the hours they were there. Which prepaid packs were sold, which were redeemed and where. And one rule: if a child arrives with a booking and the stylist ends up serving the brother and the father too, the system has to record it. None of those answers lives in a single shop, or comes out of a notebook. That is why the project became one product for the whole chain, with one design rule: nothing gets charged unless it is on record whose haircut it was, who did it and how it was paid.
Live, which haircut is underway, who is doing it and what gets charged
Each visit enters the system when the family arrives, not when they pay. The family checks itself in: it scans the shop's QR code with its account and joins the queue, with its details already on file. If it arrives without an account, reception looks it up by phone and the record appears at any of the 20 locations; without the guardian's name, a phone number and the child's birth date, nobody can be queued. If two siblings and their father come in, they enter as one visit, with one record per person and their stylist. The stylist picks it up on their phone and, when done, it is charged on the same screen. Nobody who hasn't clocked in that day can be assigned a haircut. On the other side, the owner and the regional manager see the chain live: each shop's queue, refreshed every 18 seconds; the till, every 30; who is cutting whose hair. An anti-fraud check runs every hour with five rules whose thresholds the owner sets (repeated discounts, a till open for more than a day, too many voids, a pack with no payment), and every action is logged with its user, role and location: in September, 85 people left a trail.
Online booking and time-based pricing: the schedule balances itself
Before, there were no bookings in the system. Today families book on the website or the app, at any hour: 12% of online bookings arrive between 9 pm and 9 am, with the shops closed. At 11 locations families can choose a stylist; in Miami, more than a third of online bookers do. The shop's hours govern booking, and each stylist's days off and holidays take them off the website automatically. Price is used to move demand. Pelokitos' week is back-loaded: in 2025, in Argentina, only 5% of visits fell Monday to Thursday before 1 pm, while Saturday and Sunday filled up. Each shop loads discounts by day and time and booking shows them on every slot, with a color code the brand named “Preciokitos”: whoever can come on a Tuesday morning pays less, and Saturday is left for those who can't. That is how price is moving demand into the hours that used to be empty.
The prepaid pack: from a stamped card to each family's account
The haircut pack is a big part of the business: in September it was 14% of what was charged in Argentina and 46% in Miami. Before, it was a hand-stamped card. First we migrated the balances: those from the previous system and, one by one and with a photo, the paper cards; everything was migrated successfully. Today the pack is sold within checkout or on the website, sits in the family's account and is redeemed at any shop. The queue shows how many cuts each family has left before serving them, the redemption records the branch of origin so it can be settled between franchises, and every void goes to the supervisor for review. The owner sees how many sold cuts remain unused, by country and in real time.
Everyone on the team, with their own account on their phone
Each stylist clocks in from their phone, sees their haircuts and knows at any moment how far along their monthly target they are and how much they will be paid. The manager sees, at her shop, who came in, who was late and who is cutting; she builds her team and loads days off without asking anyone. What used to come out of a spreadsheet at the end of the month, each person now has at hand.
What changed in control and in the shops
The numbers come from the records of both systems. Where there is a before and after, July, the last full month on the previous system, is compared with September, the first full month on the new one, as of 29 September 2026; the Miami figure compares October 2026 with the October average for 2023–2025. Almost everything below could not be measured before, because it wasn't recorded.
Switching without closing shops: the data first, then one at a time
Order started with the data. On 13 July we migrated Argentina: customer records were grouped by family, with a valid phone number and no duplicates. Ten days later, Miami; then Uruguay. Everything was migrated successfully across the three countries. On 16 July the system started at the first shop; in August it reached the rest, with both systems running side by side. 31 August was the previous system's last day in Argentina and Miami switched over on 12 September. Not one shop closed for a day. Since then, new families barely repeat: only 0.1% come with a phone number already on file.
What the operation made us change
Control gets its final design in the shop, with the people who use it. Requests come from the operation, as voice notes and screenshots, and ship fast: across 21 dated requests, the median was one day. Some tightened control; others loosened it where it slowed the work down. What comes next, with the same precision. The booking deposit is built and switched off at every branch. Electronic invoicing and win-back over WhatsApp are ready and waiting for the client's data and accounts.