How to Use Shopify for Hair Salons
How to Use Shopify POS for Your Hair Salon
Shopify POS is primarily an e-commerce and retail platform, so it's worth being honest upfront: if your salon is purely service-based, it isn't a natural first choice. Where it genuinely earns its place in a hair salon is when you want to sell physical retail products — shampoos, styling tools, gift vouchers — both in-chair and online, with one unified system tracking everything.
Where Shopify POS Actually Makes Sense for Hair Salons
Shopify POS (£89/month) suits hair salons that have a meaningful retail side alongside their services. Think Olaplex, GHD products, colour treatments, or branded merchandise — stock you want to sell at the chair and through an online shop simultaneously. If you're purely selling appointments, a dedicated booking tool like Fresha or Treatwell Connect will serve you far better.
The realistic sweet spot is a salon that wants to stop running a separate till and a separate Shopify website with separate stock counts. Shopify POS merges those two into one dashboard, so when a client buys your last bottle of Moroccan Oil in-salon, it immediately disappears from your online store too.
What to Sell Online Through Your Salon's Shopify Store
The products that work well for hair salons on Shopify include the following:
- Retail haircare products — professional shampoos, conditioners, treatments, and styling products you already stock in-salon and can ship or offer for click-and-collect
- Gift vouchers — Shopify supports digital gift cards natively, which you can sell online and redeem in-salon using the POS app
- Branded merchandise — tote bags, salon-branded accessories, or styling kits if your brand supports it
- Click-and-collect orders — clients order online and pick up when they come in for their appointment, reducing postage costs and increasing footfall
- Styling tool bundles — if you're an authorised GHD or BaByliss retailer, bundling tools with aftercare products can work well as an online product line
Appointment bookings themselves aren't managed through Shopify — you'll still need a separate system for that. Many UK salons pair Shopify with Fresha (free tier available) or Treatwell Connect (£25/month) to handle the scheduling side independently.
Setting Up Shopify POS in Your Salon
Getting started is straightforward. The Shopify POS app runs on iOS and Android, so your existing iPad or tablet at the front desk will work as your till immediately. Staff training is genuinely quick — the interface is clean and most team members pick it up within a day.
- Start your Shopify account and build your online product catalogue with photos, descriptions, and stock levels
- Download the Shopify POS app on your front-desk device and connect a card reader — note that Shopify Payments handles card transactions, so check their current UK rates before committing
- Set up digital gift cards in the Shopify dashboard so they're available to purchase online and redeemable in-salon
- Enable local pickup in your Shopify settings to activate click-and-collect for online orders
- Add your staff as POS users with appropriate permission levels so they can process retail sales without accessing your full admin
One practical note: Shopify Payments is required for the smoothest in-person experience. If you prefer a different payment provider, you can use third-party options, but this adds complexity. For salons that want simpler standalone payments, Zettle Go or SumUp POS are worth considering on their own merits — though they won't give you the unified online-offline inventory that Shopify does.
Connecting Your Accounts and Staying Compliant
For UK VAT and Making Tax Digital compliance, connect Shopify to Xero (£15/month) using the official integration. Xero pulls in your Shopify sales automatically, making MTD VAT submissions considerably less painful at quarter-end. This matters if your salon's turnover exceeds the £90,000 VAT threshold or if you've registered voluntarily.
If you're sending marketing emails to clients about new products or promotions, Mailchimp's free tier integrates with Shopify and includes GDPR consent tools built in — important under UK data protection law when capturing customer emails at checkout. For rota management as your retail operation grows, Deputy (£6/month) integrates well with UK payroll processes and keeps staff scheduling separate from your POS system.
Is Shopify POS the Right Fit for Your Salon?
If retail products make up a genuine portion of your salon's revenue — or you want to grow that side — Shopify POS at £89/month gives you a professional, scalable platform that unifies your in-salon till and online shop cleanly. The investment starts to make sense once you're regularly selling stock rather than relying solely on service income.
If you're a service-only salon with occasional product sales, the monthly cost is hard to justify. In that case, a free-tier booking platform like Fresha combined with a simple card reader will cover most of what you need at far lower cost. Be realistic about your retail ambitions before committing — Shopify rewards salons that treat product sales as a genuine revenue stream.