The book lives on a phone, in DMs, on a sticky pad.
If your name walks out the door, your book walks with it. Independent pros want their clients to be theirs. Not rented from a marketplace, not held hostage by an export fee.
Independent pros run real businesses on phones, sticky notes, and split-attention. Alera is a single place for the work. Bookings, clients, reminders, history. Designed for the people doing the actual cutting, coloring, glamming, and trimming.
We spent months in barbershops, salons, nail studios, and on bridal mornings. Six themes came up almost word for word. They became the brief.
If your name walks out the door, your book walks with it. Independent pros want their clients to be theirs. Not rented from a marketplace, not held hostage by an export fee.
Confirmations and nudges should sound like the person doing the work, not a generic system message. Clients respond to names they know.
Most apps optimize for managers. Independent pros want one screen. Who's next, who's here, what's ready, what to charge. And a quiet rest of the app.
Color formula, fade number, lipstick, lash style, allergens, inspo. The details that made the last visit good. Independent pros remember everything; the software shouldn't make them retype it.
Patch tests with expiry windows. Consent captured at booking. The basics most software treats as paperwork, surfaced where the work actually happens.
Every download is a tax on the booking. A browser link works on every phone. No app store, no account, no detour. Just a time and a tap.
The work is the cut, the color, the brush, the blowout. Not the booking app. Alera should fade into the background and leave the chair, the client, and the craft front and center. If you can't describe what we do in one breath, we built it wrong.
We'd rather strip a feature than ship a busy screen. Every pixel earns its place by helping the next ten minutes go smoother.
Booking pages, reminders, and receipts carry your name and brand. Alera stays out of the frame the client sees.
CSV and vCard exports are one tap away from day one. No paywall to leave. No retention fee to keep your own clients.
Alera is in early pilot. Onboarding the first independent pros and watching how the product holds under a real week. The waitlist is the door in. Every seat we open gets the founder's attention, white-glove setup, and a direct line for the things only a working chair would notice.
Onboarding our first independent pros across barbering, hairstyling, nail tech, and bridal makeup. Every seat gets a founder onboarding call and a direct line.
Once the first wave runs cleanly through a full month. Including a real holiday week. We open the next set of seats from the waitlist.
The mobile app is in the works. Today the operator portal runs in any browser; the dedicated app shows up after the web product holds steady.
Drop your number. We'll text when your seat opens.