Lash Consultation · Business Model

Pricing built to stay cheap, and still clear 70% margin

A two-sided pricing structure for the Lash Consultation + AR try-on tool (one price for individual clients, one for lash techs and studios who license it for their own business) sized against the tool's real per-use cost so adoption-friendly pricing and a 70% margin target aren't in tension.

← Back to the product

The Constraint

Cheap enough to adopt, profitable enough to run

The brand goal is a 70% average monthly margin on both sides of the product (clients using it directly, and lash techs licensing it for their own clients) while keeping the price low enough that people actually try it. Those two goals usually fight each other. Here they don't, because the recommendation engine runs entirely on the client's own device: no API call, no server-side compute, no cloud cost per consultation. The marginal cost of one more consultation is $0, so "cheap" and "70% margin" aren't even in tension at any realistic price. The only real cost in the model is payment processing when money actually changes hands, and that's what sets the floor on how low the client-side price can safely go.

Cost Basis

What one consultation actually costs to run

Pulled from the app's actual code, not an estimate: the recommendation is computed by a deterministic, on-device engine: no API key, no network call, no AI service involved. The app's own privacy policy states it plainly: "Nothing is sent to us, to any AI service, or to any external server — there is no cloud processing of your consultation." The eye-shape read and lash-length measurement also run on-device, via a face-landmark model that downloads once (cached) from a public CDN on first use: a fixed, unbilled bandwidth cost, not a per-consultation charge.

Cost line	Per consultation	Note
Recommendation engine	$0.00	Runs on-device: no server, no API
Photo analysis (eye shape + length)	$0.00	On-device face-landmark model, one-time cached download
Hosting / domain	~$0.00	Fixed overhead, rounds to nothing at any real transaction volume

What this means for pricing: the marginal cost of running one more consultation is genuinely $0, regardless of how many photos are involved or how many consultations a lash tech runs in a month. The only real, non-zero cost anywhere in this model shows up the moment money changes hands: payment processing, modelled at Stripe's standard rate (2.9% + $0.30 per charge).

The Model

Two tiers, one cost base

Client Side · Self-Serve

Single Consultation

$3 / consultation

A one-time, no-signup fee for a client to get a personalised style recommendation, live AR try-on, and a downloadable PDF spec sheet, priced like an impulse buy, not a commitment.

Style + curl + length recommendation

Live camera AR try-on

Downloadable spec sheet (PDF)

Credited toward booking at LashPals

~87% gross margin

Lash Tech Side · B2B License

Studio / Solo License

$19 / month

A monthly subscription for other lash techs and studios to run the same consultation + AR tool with their own clients. It's genuinely unlimited, since running one more consultation costs nothing.

Truly unlimited consultations

Own branding on the client-facing flow

Same recommendation engine and AR try-on

Undercuts comparable beauty-industry SaaS ($30–100/mo)

~95.5% gross margin

Margin Analysis

Where the 70% floor actually sits

Client side: $3 self-serve consultation

Cost line	Amount	Note
Recommendation engine	$0.00	On-device, no marginal cost
Payment processing	$0.387	Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30 on a $3 charge
Total cost	$0.387
Gross margin	87.1%	Well above the 70% floor

Lash tech side: $19/month, by usage

Monthly usage	Recommendation engine cost	+ processing	Gross margin
20 consultations	$0.00	$0.851	95.5%
60 consultations	$0.00	$0.851	95.5%
200 consultations	$0.00	$0.851	95.5%
1,000+ consultations	$0.00	$0.851	95.5%

Margin is flat at 95.5% no matter how many consultations a subscriber runs, because there's no per-consultation cost to scale against: only the fixed $0.851/month Stripe fee on the subscription charge itself. That's why the license can be priced as genuinely unlimited: a heavy user doesn't erode margin the way they would if each consultation carried a real marginal cost.

Illustrative Month

Blended across both sides

Line	Volume	Revenue	Cost	Margin
Client self-serve	200 consultations	$600	$77.40	87.1%
Lash tech licenses	10 subscribers	$190	$8.51	95.5%
Blended total	—	$790	$85.91	89.1%

This is a deliberately modest month (200 client consultations and 10 licensed lash techs) to show the model holds well above 70% even before scale kicks in. Because neither cost line scales with usage, every additional client or subscriber added on top pulls the blend closer to the lash-tech side's 95.5%, not away from it.

Why This Pricing

The reasoning, not just the numbers

▸

The cost base is the unlock. Running the engine on-device instead of through a cloud AI API means the marginal cost of one more consultation is $0, not a small-but-nonzero number. That's what makes "cheap" and "70% margin" compatible instead of a tradeoff: most pricing tension comes from COGS being a meaningful share of price, and here it structurally can't be.

▸

The only real margin risk is payment processing. At very small transaction sizes (under ~$2), Stripe's flat $0.30 fee dominates and can push margin below 70%. That set the floor on the client-side price; there is no AI cost to weigh against it.

▸

Two sides, two jobs. The client tier is priced to remove friction and drive adoption (an impulse-level $3, creditable toward booking). The lash tech tier is priced to be a clear no-brainer against $30–100/mo industry SaaS alternatives, while still carrying the bulk of the margin.

▸

"Unlimited" can mean it literally. Because no consultation carries a marginal cost, the lash tech license doesn't need a usage cap to protect margin: a solo lash tech doing 5 consultations a month and a busy studio doing 500 land at the same 95.5%.