For more than cutting hair
Hair Beauty Hub (HBH) is the newly rebranded, digitally focused face of Sanké, a hairdressing company based in Belgium. With over 20 salons across Belgium and the United States, Sanké has taken the next step by launching a new digital platform to bring together all of its services and products in one place.
hairbeautyhub.be was envisioned as a holistic hub where services and products are tailored specifically to each user. From the platform, users can book appointments at any HBH salon and purchase eco-friendly hair products, available both online and in-store.
Supported by a modern rebrand and distinctive visual identity, HBH aims to establish itself as one of the leading hairdressing brands in Belgium.
Designing a digital hub
The scale of this project—primarily constrained by time—demanded a clear and well-defined understanding of all features, user actions, and flows to be included in the initial product release. The hub incorporates a custom appointment booking system, a tailored product store, content display, account management, and personalized content based on user preferences. Designing the page content and establishing a clear information hierarchy proved to be an arduous task, but was ultimately optimized through several iterations.
The focus of the end-user platform was to guide users into the HBH experience and deliver a personalized journey based on their preferences. From the moment they enter the platform, the goal was to clearly present the core value proposition to new users, while allowing signed-in users to seamlessly achieve their goals—whether booking a service, purchasing products, or becoming a new client.
The user interface was entirely designed around HBH’s new rebrand, offering a clean, sleek, and modern look that captures the essence of the brand.
On the other side, the platform also functions as an admin and CRM tool for HBH professionals and the management team. This required the development of a secondary platform for HBH hairdressers, enabling them to manage bookings and access information related to their salons, employees, clients, and services. Additionally, a CRM editor was created for managers, allowing them to generate content and access performance analytics as well as detailed client insights.
The admin side of the platform was optimized for the digital environment most commonly used in salons, with a particular focus on the tablet experience. The goal was to provide hairdressers with a simple, intuitive interface that allows them to manage bookings and access client information in real time during their working hours. To ensure this, we collaborated closely with the HBH management team—many of whom are also salon managers—whose feedback during research and small-scale testing proved invaluable.
key takeaways
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Getting the scope right. It’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting everything ready for launch — but what you want isn’t always what you need, especially when you factor in user needs, business goals, time, and budget. HBH came in with a long list of features they hoped to include in the first release, but trying to fit it all in risked delaying the launch. By analyzing and defining both business requirements and user needs, I worked closely with HBH and the product team, to define a realistic initial scope — one that met core goals while leaving room for future updates and improvements.
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On using third party component libraries. Time is a luxury and with this project’s complexity and scope, we had to be smart about how we approached design and development to avoid going over budget. While the customer portal was fully custom-built, we decided to speed things up on the Admin side by using Radix UI, an open-source React component library. This choice made the design process smoother and helped the dev team move faster too. It also freed me up to focus on what mattered most — mapping out flows, actions, and content to create a solid admin experience on booking management, gathering client and business metrics and content creation.
