Collectivate

The gap I kept running into

Every studio owner I work with has the same two conversations. Either they’re paying for a room they aren’t using every day, or they’re looking for one and can’t find anything without going through a leasing company that takes a cut.

Collectivate is the thing that sits between those two conversations. Beauty pros browse available suites by city and state, contact the owner directly, and that’s it. No platform fee, no middleman, no contract with me.

The work

A product, not a brochure

This isn’t a marketing site with a form on it. It’s a searchable marketplace with listings, saved-space accounts, geographic filtering across six states, and a two-sided flow: rent a suite, or list one you’re not using.

Built to say what it is

The site opens by admitting it’s new. “We’re just getting started” sits above the fold, with a direct ask to list a space or sign up for alerts. A brand new marketplace pretending to be a busy one is transparent to anyone who scrolls, and it costs you the trust you need most in the first year.

The same visual standard as a client build

Warm ivory, espresso, a serif headline with an italic pivot. Software for the beauty industry usually looks like software. This looks like it belongs next to the studios it serves.

Where it stands

Collectivate already ranks for exactly the queries it needs to own (“salon suites for rent near me”, “salon suite rentals”, “how do you increase salon suite occupancy”) and impressions are climbing fast.

The job now is inventory. A marketplace with seven listings can rank all it likes; it becomes genuinely useful at seventy. That’s what I’m building toward, and the performance numbers go here when the supply side justifies them.

Worth saying why this is in the portfolio at all: it’s the clearest evidence that I build software, not just websites. The same instinct that produced a searchable two-sided marketplace is what produces a booking flow that actually converts.