Case Studies › Nearcut

Marketplace & Booking Platforms

A Booking OS Built Specifically for Barbers

Techdots built Nearcut from the ground up — a marketplace that handles real-time appointment scheduling, client history, and in-app payments across hundreds of independent barbershops. We designed the data model, built both the consumer-facing booking experience and the barber-side management dashboard, and integrated payments and communications so shop owners could run their business entirely from one place.

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Nearcut

Marketplace & Booking Platforms

Increase in bookings per shop per month post-launch

68%

Reduction in no-shows via automated SMS reminders

£2.4M+

In-app payments processed in first 12 months

20 weeks

timeline

This engagement is best for

Marketplace founders targeting service-based SMBs

Booking platform startups needing multi-tenant architecture

Ventures replacing pen-and-paper workflows in trades or services

Operators who need consumer-facing discovery plus a merchant operations dashboard

The Transformation

Before & After

Before

✕ Barbershops relied on phone calls, walk-ins, and paper appointment books with no real visibility into upcoming demand

✕ No centralized client records — barbers couldn't track preferences, visit history, or contact details across sessions

✕ Payments were cash-only or via generic card readers with no connection to booking data

✕ No-show rates were high with zero automated follow-up or reminder infrastructure

✕ Shop owners had no data on peak hours, staff utilization, or revenue trends to make informed decisions

After

✓ Real-time online booking available 24/7, with live slot availability synced per barber and per chair

✓ Persistent client profiles with full visit history, preferred barber, and style notes accessible to the shop

✓ In-app payments fully integrated into the booking flow — clients pay at checkout, funds settle to shops automatically

✓ Automated SMS and push reminders cut no-shows by 68% within the first quarter

✓ Shop owners gained a live dashboard tracking daily revenue, appointment volume, and staff performance

What We Built

Deliverables & Scope

Every item below was chosen because it directly addressed a business bottleneck — not because it was technically interesting.

Multi-tenant barbershop onboarding system with shop profiles, barber rosters, and configurable service menus

Real-time availability engine handling concurrent slot reservation across multiple barbers per location without double-booking

Consumer booking flow with barber selection, service picker, and in-app Stripe payment capture at confirmation

Barber and shop-owner dashboard with calendar view, client records, revenue reporting, and payout history

Automated notification system sending SMS and push appointment reminders and post-visit review requests

Admin panel for Nearcut's internal team to manage shop onboarding, resolve disputes, and monitor platform health

ROI Logic

Why This Generated
Real Business Value

Barbershops that moved from walk-in and phone bookings to Nearcut filled previously lost appointment slots and converted cash payments to traceable digital transactions, directly increasing per-shop revenue. By owning the payment layer, Nearcut captured a percentage of every transaction processed on the platform — turning booking volume into a compounding revenue stream rather than a flat subscription model.

Key Outcomes

Increase in bookings per shop per month post-launch

68%

Reduction in no-shows via automated SMS reminders

£2.4M+

In-app payments processed in first 12 months

Why It Worked

The Decisions That
Made the Difference

Good execution matters. But the right early decisions matter more.

We modeled the data around the barber, not just the shop — allowing multi-barber shops to operate independently while sharing a single storefront on the marketplace

The booking engine was built to handle optimistic concurrency, so high-traffic slots could be reserved without locking the database or creating ghost bookings

Payments were embedded into the confirmation step rather than bolted on after — removing friction that typically drives cart abandonment in service booking flows

We ran closed beta testing with five real barbershops before public launch, which surfaced scheduling edge cases (bank holidays, last-minute cancellations, split shifts) that would have caused problems at scale

Tech Stack

Sidekiq

Integrations

Stripe Connect (marketplace payments and barber payouts) Twilio (SMS appointment reminders and confirmations) Google Maps Platform (shop discovery and location search) Firebase Cloud Messaging (push notifications for the mobile experience)

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