Case Study: How The Gilded Comb cut admin time and lifted upsells with PosterBooking

The Client

The Gilded Comb is an independent hair salon and barbershop based in Edinburgh, Scotland, offering cuts, colour, beard grooming and styling services to a loyal local clientele. The salon employs eight stylists and barbers across two chair rows and a dedicated beard bar, and sees a steady mix of walk-ins and appointments booked online. Like many independent salons, it built its reputation on word of mouth and a strong Instagram presence, but its in-store communication had not kept pace with the rest of the business. Owner Fiona Mackenzie had been running the salon for six years when she decided the paper based system for pricing, promotions and stylist availability was quietly costing the business time, money and a bit of polish.

The salon operates six days a week, with Saturdays being its busiest trading day. Seasonal promotions, new product launches from its retail shelf and constantly shifting stylist schedules meant that the information customers needed to see was changing far more often than the salon's printed materials could keep up with.

Life Before PosterBooking

Before PosterBooking, The Gilded Comb relied on a patchwork of printed and handwritten materials to communicate prices, promotions and stylist availability to customers. The main price list lived in a wooden A-frame near the entrance, printed on card stock at a local print shop. Every time prices changed, which happened roughly every quarter, or when a new service was added, Fiona had to redesign the price card in a basic design tool, email it to the printer, wait two to three days for proofs and collection, then physically swap the card into the frame.

Seasonal promotions were even more labour intensive. For things like a Christmas gift voucher push or a summer colour special, the team would print A3 posters and tape them to the salon window using masking tape, which left sticky residue and often tore the paper when removed. One junior stylist, tasked with "front of house presentation" as a side duty, spent an estimated 3 to 4 hours a week trimming, laminating and re-pinning notices, including a recurring task of updating a whiteboard behind the till that listed which stylists were working that day and their current availability.

Stylist availability was a particular pain point. The salon used a handwritten rota on a whiteboard that had to be wiped and rewritten whenever someone swapped a shift, called in sick, or took on a late appointment. Customers would often ask reception staff to double check the whiteboard against the online booking system because the two frequently disagreed, costing receptionists a few extra minutes per enquiry.

Retail product promotions relied on small printed shelf-talkers and a USB stick that was occasionally plugged into an old television mounted behind the till, playing a looping slideshow of product photos that someone had put together in PowerPoint eighteen months earlier and never updated. When the USB stick went missing for several weeks in early 2024, nobody actually noticed, which says a lot about how little attention the screen was getting by that point.

Taken together, Fiona estimated that staff were spending around 5 hours a week on tasks related to maintaining printed signage, whiteboards and the in-store television, not including the time lost to confused customers or mismatched information. On the cost side, the salon was spending approximately £85 a month on printing, laminating sheets, card stock, tape and the occasional emergency same-day print job when a poster was torn or a price changed unexpectedly. Over a year, that added up to roughly £1,020 in print spend alone, excluding staff time.

The Solution

Fiona had seen digital menu boards in a coffee shop near the salon and began researching digital signage software built for small, independent businesses rather than large retail chains. PosterBooking stood out because it did not require specialist hardware, ran from a simple cloud dashboard, and offered a free tier generous enough to trial properly before committing any budget. The salon signed up for a free PosterBooking account to test the idea on a single screen behind the till before expanding.

The plan was straightforward: replace the printed A-frame price list with a dedicated screen near the entrance, turn the neglected television behind the till into a proper retail promotion and loyalty screen, and add a third screen to the mirror wall to show stylist availability and portfolio shots of recent work, helping customers decide on a style while they waited.

Where They Implemented It

The Gilded Comb installed three screens in total, each serving a distinct purpose:

• Shop window facing the street: A 32 inch screen shows rotating content including current promotions, opening hours, a short reel of before and after colour transformations, and a call to book online. This screen is designed to catch the attention of passers by on Broughton Street and convert foot traffic into bookings.
• Behind the till: The salon's existing television was repurposed to run the full service price list alongside retail product promotions, gift voucher offers and a loyalty scheme reminder. This is the screen customers look at most often while paying or booking their next appointment.
• Mirror wall between styling chairs: A smaller screen was added here to show stylist availability for the week, a rotating gallery of recent haircuts and colour work, and seasonal styling tips. Clients waiting for colour to develop or for their stylist to finish with another client often watch this screen, making it a useful moment to showcase new services.

Each screen runs its own playlist, scheduled centrally so that, for example, a Saturday morning promotion on beard trims automatically swaps to a Sunday brunch style special without anyone touching the screens themselves.

The Implementation

Fiona chose Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K devices for all three screens, mainly because they were inexpensive, easy to source locally and simple enough that she did not need an IT contractor. Setting up the PosterBooking app took roughly 2 minutes per device: plug in the Fire TV Stick, connect to the salon's guest Wi-Fi network, install the PosterBooking app from the app store, and enter the pairing code shown on screen into the PosterBooking dashboard.

From there, Fiona built playlists directly in the browser based cloud dashboard, uploading images of the price list, short video clips of styling work, and simple promotional graphics she made herself using free design templates. She scheduled the window screen to show the retail promotion during the day and switch to a "walk-ins welcome" message during quieter midweek afternoons.

Training the rest of the team took about half an hour during a regular staff meeting. Two senior stylists were given dashboard access so they could update the stylist availability screen themselves when the rota changed, without needing Fiona to do it. The salon's receptionist was shown how to pause a playlist or push an urgent update, such as a last minute appointment slot opening up, in under a minute.

Within the first week, all three screens were live and content was being refreshed roughly twice a week, a level of upkeep that would have been unthinkable under the old printed system.

Life With PosterBooking

Day to day, The Gilded Comb now treats its screens the way it once treated a shared calendar: a living, easily updated system that reflects what is actually happening in the salon. When a stylist calls in sick, the rota screen is updated from a phone in under a minute. When a new retail product arrives, Fiona photographs it on her lunch break and has it live on the till screen before the afternoon rush.

Seasonal campaigns, like a Mother's Day gift voucher push or a back to school tidy up offer, are now scheduled weeks in advance and set to start and stop automatically, which means nobody has to remember to take old promotions down. The team has also started using the window screen to test which messages draw people in, swapping between a focus on colour services and a focus on beard grooming depending on the time of day, something that would have been far too costly to test with printed posters.

Staff reaction has been positive, particularly from the two stylists given dashboard access, who say it feels like a small but meaningful upgrade to how professional the salon looks. Reception no longer fields questions comparing the whiteboard to the online booking system, because the screen and the booking system are now informed by the same up to date information.

The salon has also found the screens useful for quieter moments. During late evening appointments, when walk in traffic drops off, the till screen switches automatically to a retail focus, showcasing the shampoos and styling products on the shelves behind it. Clients waiting for colour to develop often browse the loop, and staff say those relaxed, unhurried viewings have turned into a noticeable trickle of extra retail sales each week.

The Results: Time and Money Saved

• Admin time on signage and rota updates fell from roughly 5 hours a week to around 1 hour a week, a saving of about 4 hours weekly.
• Annualised, that is approximately 208 hours saved per year, equivalent to five full working weeks.
• Monthly print and laminating spend dropped from about £85 to under £10, a saving of roughly £900 a year.
• Retail product sales near the till rose noticeably after the salon began rotating promotional content on the screen rather than relying on a static, outdated slideshow.
• Window screen content testing helped the salon identify that colour transformation reels drew more walk-ins than static price offers, informing future marketing decisions.

Looking further ahead, Fiona is already planning a fifth screen for a small staff-only area to display daily targets and product knowledge notes, extending the same cloud dashboard she now uses confidently every week.

Testimonial

PosterBooking took something that used to eat into my Sunday evenings, printing and laminating price cards, and turned it into a five minute job I can do from my phone between clients. Our window screen genuinely gets people walking in off the street to ask about the colour offer they just saw.

Fiona Mackenzie, Owner, The Gilded Comb

Frequently Asked Questions

Is PosterBooking free for a small salon with only a few screens?

Yes. PosterBooking is free to use for up to 10 screens. A small watermark appears on free screens after an initial 3 month trial period, but salons like The Gilded Comb running three screens can continue using the platform at no cost beyond that.

What hardware do we need to run PosterBooking on our existing televisions?

PosterBooking runs on Amazon Fire TV Stick, Amazon Signage Stick or Display, Android TV devices, Windows PCs, Chromebox and Raspberry Pi. The Gilded Comb chose Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K devices because they are affordable and widely available from local retailers.

How long does it take to set up a screen?

Setup typically takes about 2 minutes per screen. You install the PosterBooking app on the device, connect it to Wi-Fi, and enter a pairing code shown on screen into the cloud dashboard to link it to your account.

What happens if our salon's Wi-Fi goes down during the day?

PosterBooking screens keep playing through content caching, so they will continue displaying the last downloaded playlist even if the internet connection drops temporarily. Once the connection is restored, the screen automatically syncs any new updates.

If we grow beyond three screens, what does it cost?

Paid plans cost $6.49 per screen per month starting from the 11th screen, since the first 10 screens remain free. This means a salon group expanding to multiple branches only begins paying once it scales well beyond a single location.

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