26
Brand partners
170
registered Beauty institutes
1.000+
Downloads in the first few weeks
Health and Beauty Germany, based in Ettlingen near Karlsruhe, is an established specialist publisher and event organizer in the beauty industry. The company publishes trade magazines such as BEAUTY FORUM and MEDICAL and organizes Europe’s leading beauty event in the fall, the BEAUTY FORUM Festival. Since 2018, Health and Beauty Germany has been part of the global network of BolognaFiere Cosmoprof.
1985
Ettlingen
Beauty
App development
Health & Beauty is a leading trade publisher and event organizer in the beauty industry, hosting the BEAUTY FORUM Festival, one of Europe’s most significant beauty trade fairs. SPRYLAB developed the BEAUTY FORUM App for the company – the first community, content, and event app that brings together all market participants in the beauty industry in one place. The central challenge: serving three completely different user groups with specific needs on one platform and setting new digital standards as a pioneer in a traditionally offline-oriented market.
Health & Beauty already had strong print and event formats and recognized the strategic opportunity to additionally connect its target groups digitally. “The BEAUTY FORUM App is the first of its kind in the beauty market to enable this networking,” explains Christine Streicher, Senior Marketing Manager at Health & Beauty.
The vision: Create a platform where beauty professionals can present their institute and attract new customers, brands can showcase their products and communicate directly with the target group, and beauty fans receive reliable content instead of social media half-truths. “We want to bring all three market participants together – consumers, professionals, and brands,” explains Jerome Siel, Marketing and Account Director at Health & Beauty. Event functions for the BEAUTY FORUM Festival were also added.
Each user group faced its own challenges: Professionals struggled with difficult customer acquisition and lack of digital visibility options. Consumers sought a central platform with reliable beauty information. Brands needed a direct channel to reach both professionals and end customers. “We also absolutely wanted to go live by the end of March for a specific Düsseldorf trade fair to start user and brand acquisition on-site,” says Siel. The combination of technical expertise, experience with publishing platforms, and the close partnership with the CMS solution Purple convinced Health & Beauty early on that SPRYLAB was the right technology partner.
The project started with an intensive on-site workshop. The SPRYLAB project team developed the use cases for all three target groups together with the client team and a viable product vision. The solution: a clear phase model. Version 1 deliberately focused on professionals and brands with a content feed for general beauty articles and exclusive specialist articles. The content came directly from Purple CMS, partially automatically imported from the e-paper editions via xCago. Professionals and brands received their own profiles.
The app uses a two-tier monetization model: Professionals can subscribe for €6.90 per month and receive access to exclusive specialist articles from BEAUTY FORUM magazines as well as extended profile options for self-presentation. Brands book advertising spaces in the app through a separate process – deliberately without in-app purchase to avoid App Store fees.
SPRYLAB used a modern architecture with Capacitor as framework, Strapi as content backend, and Posthog for user tracking. Keycloak handled role management with different permissions for beauty fans, professionals, and brands. The xCago integration enables automated content import: Health & Beauty sends PDF magazines to xCago, which extracts web-ready articles from them. These land on the SPRYLAB sFTP server and are imported into the app controlled via a central import CSV file. For event features, MS Dynamics was connected to manage exhibitor data. The external Emendo shop was also linked, with perspective for later complete integration of the ticket shop. Additionally, connection to Mautic, Health & Beauty’s marketing automation tool for newsletters and campaign links, was established.
Lisa Theis, Project Manager at SPRYLAB, managed the project with agile software development based on two-week sprints. “The agile working method was a new approach for us that we very quickly came to appreciate,” reports Christine Streicher. Version 1 went live punctually at the end of March, exactly in time for the BEAUTY FORUM Festival. “We are very satisfied with the result,” summarizes Streicher.
The BEAUTY FORUM App has been available since launch as the first digital platform of its kind in the German-speaking beauty market. SPRYLAB developed a comprehensive MVP in close partnership with Health & Beauty in three successive phases. Each phase strategically complemented the platform with central functionalities for the various target groups:
Phase 1 (Foundation): Launch with content feed, profiles for professionals and brands, and basic advertising spaces laid the technical and content foundation. Within the first weeks, the app recorded over 1,000 downloads. Particularly pleasing: With 26 registered brands, Health & Beauty was already close to the annual goal of 30 brands.
Phase 2 (Consumer Integration): Extension to include the third target group with the strategically important salon finder, which makes institutes searchable specifically by treatments, brands, and location. Voucher campaigns for brands and salons create additional monetization options and increase user activation. With 170 registered institutes, a growing community was already developing.
Phase 3 (Event Functionalities): Complete integration of trade fair features with scan-to-connect for efficient contact generation, interactive hall maps, exhibitor lists with brand profile linking, and program and presentation planning with favorites list and push reminders. The complete MVP was used for the first time at the BEAUTY FORUM Festival. “The personal conversations at the trade fair booth were extremely valuable and provided further important qualitative feedback,” explains Christine Streicher.
The content feed works reliably throughout: New articles are automatically imported daily. The integration of Purple CMS with xCago makes it possible to make print content digitally usable without additional editorial effort. Posthog tracking also provides detailed insights into user behavior, which is currently being evaluated to validate product-market fit.
“Collaboration with the SPRYLAB team has worked excellently across all phases to date,” summarizes Streicher. “Through partnership-based collaboration and clear prioritization, we have realized a complete MVP that now serves as the basis for data-driven further development.” The app brought Health & Beauty a decisive step toward digital transformation. For the first time, the company can communicate directly with all three target groups and receives valuable insights into platform usage.
With the successful launch of the comprehensive MVP, Health & Beauty is currently testing the product-market fit of the BEAUTY FORUM App. The collected user data and qualitative feedback from all three target groups form the basis for strategic decisions on further development. The proven partnership with SPRYLAB enables an agile response to insights from the test phase.
Various features are in focus for the next expansion stage: for example, a job board specifically for the beauty industry, integration of appointment booking tools for professionals, and shop and affiliate solutions for product sales. “As part of the CosmoProf Group, the world’s largest beauty trade fair organizer, we have the exciting opportunity to also roll out this solution internationally if successful”, explains Jerome Siel.
Health and Beauty Germany, based in Ettlingen near Karlsruhe, is an established trade publisher and event organizer in the beauty industry. The company publishes trade magazines such as BEAUTY FORUM and MEDICAL and organizes the BEAUTY FORUM Festival, Europe’s leading beauty event in autumn. Since 2018, Health and Beauty Germany has been part of the global network of BolognaFiere Cosmoprof and develops media content and innovative events for national and international markets.
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