For Nigeria’s thriving beauty and wellness industry, keeping up with modern management demands has been a significant challenge.

Many salon and spa owners still rely on manual processes or decentralised systems that require them to juggle multiple tools for various operations, like booking appointments, processing payments, and managing client records. This fragmented approach makes it harder to stay competitive in an increasingly demanding beauty market.

Recognising this gap, Splice, a locally developed management solution, has emerged to transform how beauty businesses operate. Designed by Nigerians, for Nigerians, it is more than just a platform — it’s a comprehensive tool tailored to the unique needs of the industry, driven by the vision of its founder, Layo Ogunbanwo.

The idea to build Splice came to Layo in 2020. While helping her friend, a Lagos-based salon owner, streamline business processes — appointment booking, customer relationship management (CRM), and staff scheduling — Layo encountered firsthand the operational challenges beauty businesses faced daily due to manual workflows and disconnected tools. 

This experience sparked a deeper inquiry into how many more beauty businesses, like her friend's, were facing the same challenges. This led her to interview dozens of salon and spa owners. 

The findings were clear: Nigeria’s beauty professionals needed a centralised solution that simplified operations, enhanced customer loyalty, and supported business growth.

With the insights from her friend’s salon and interactions with salon and spa owners, Layo set out to build Splice — an all-in-one booking, payment and business management software for beauty and wellness businesses in Africa, starting with Nigeria. 

This was undoubtedly going to be a big deal, but Layo was no stranger to creating high-impact products.

With 13 years of experience leading product strategy, marketing, and growth across Africa, the United States, and Latin America, she has a proven track record of building impactful solutions for global markets.

Before founding Splice, Layo was VP of Product Strategy at Nigeria’s largest savings and investment platform PiggyVest, where she played a key role in transforming savings for Nigerians.

She’s also held product leadership roles at Nubank, the largest digital bank in the world by valuation, and Axxess, a notable healthcare service provider in the United States. 

A lot of planning and three years later in January 2023, Layo hired a designer to create the first user interface for her new product. An engineer joined the team in April, transforming the design into a working product. By August, an early version of Splice was ready.

Following its initial release, Splice entered a private testing phase. During this time, Layo and her team worked with industry professionals, gathering feedback and refining the platform to address key operational challenges. Layo explains;

Our goal wasn’t just to build software for software sake

It was to solve real problems and make running a beauty business simpler, more efficient, and profitable

This extensive private testing allowed Splice to evolve into a powerful tool that simplifies operations, drives customer retention, and boosts revenue for salons and spas. 

Designed for hair salons, barbershops, makeup studios, nail bars, medspa, esthetics clinics, and more, the platform's key features include:

These features were showcased during Splice’s grand unveiling at Beauty Connect Africa 2024, a landmark event organised in partnership with L’Oréal, Sterling Bank, The Business Hub, and Beauty Hut.

The gathering drew over 150 beauty and wellness professionals eager to network, gain insights, and explore avenues for business growth. For Layo and her team, the event was an opportunity to demonstrate how Splice addresses the key challenges facing Nigeria’s beauty industry today.

After more than a year of development and iteration, Splice launched publicly in October 2024, providing beauty and wellness businesses in Nigeria — and soon across Africa — with an all-in-one booking, payment, and business management solution tailored to their needs. Layo often says;

The journey doesn’t end when a product launches, that’s when the real work begins — listening, iterating, and ensuring the product evolves to meet the needs of the people using it

With Splice now in the hands of business owners, Layo and her team took the next big step: releasing the 2024 Beyond Beauty Report, a landmark study highlighting trends and opportunities in Nigeria’s beauty and wellness industry. But why was this report such an important milestone for Splice?

Earlier in 2024, during Splice’s beta testing phase, Layo uncovered some eye-opening data. Projections indicated that Nigeria’s beauty and personal care market would generate $9.72 billion (₦15.5 trillion) in revenue in 2024, more than double the $4.6 billion (₦1.6 trillion) recorded in 2018.

Even more striking, this growth was expected to continue through 2029 despite economic challenges. For salons and spas across the country, this was a massive growth opportunity and Splice was perfectly positioned to help them take advantage of it. But Layo believed Splice could go beyond just offering software.

This belief stems from her unwavering commitment to empowerment and inclusion. Beyond her corporate achievements, Layo is a fierce advocate for gender equality as a founding member of the Feminist Coalition, a group of Nigerian feminists championing women’s rights.

Her work with Splice mirrors her drive to uplift and empower others. Armed with Splice’s tools, Layo felt one critical piece was missing for beauty businesses — accurate and actionable insights.

Determined to fill this gap, her team conducted an in-depth survey of 500 Nigerian beauty customers across various age groups, demographics, and genders.

The goal was to uncover how Nigerian consumers discover beauty service businesses, what they value most in these establishments, and why they keep returning for more. The result of the survey is a report titled Beyond Beauty: Understanding Your Customers. 

The report found that 67.4% of clients prefer businesses that offer loyalty programs, yet most beauty businesses don’t have one in place.

Another key insight is the importance of service quality, with 70% of customers ranking it as their top priority. Features like Splice’s customisable loyalty tools, help businesses address these gaps. 

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