Bex+Co

Vertical

bex+Co. is the proof-of-concept for the whole franchise-vertical playbook (BBE Playbook #4, So Bexy). Bex Irvine’s Shared Workspace Salon™ model is the anchor client for franchise brand + marketing leadership, and the first real deployment of the Sales Concierge worker.

The engagement

Andrew (Chief Brand + Marketing Officer) and Stefi (Chief Experience + Community Officer) run as a two-person leadership unit alongside Bex, Kirsten (Design + Store Development), Gary (Real Estate + Construction), Liana (Social + Admin), and the coaching team.

The Membership pivot

The single biggest live brand move: retiring “chair rental” / “booth rent” everywhere and replacing it with Membership, inside a category bex+Co. created and owns, the Shared Workspace Salon™. One sentence anchors it:

A bex+Co. membership is everything an independent beauty professional needs to run, grow, and protect their business, all under one luxury roof.

The Membership Messaging Foundation v1 (May 2026) is the canonical source for every surface: website, bots, social, email, franchise deck, podcast. Key mechanics:

• 100% of service revenue stays with the stylist. 15% retail commission on top. Zero inventory to buy upfront.
• Pricing is never quoted publicly, conversation-led only, revealed after the 4-pillar value walk on a call.
• Existing stylists get a bridge message: nothing changes operationally, they’re automatically included, this is a rename plus a sharper story, not a new tier they’re locked out of.

The Next Celebrity Stylist launch system

A per-city, repeatable 4-week contest format (Plan v1, pending Bex greenlight) that flips the launch sequence: instead of the franchisee being the first face a market sees, a local beauty pro gets discovered and elevated to be the year-long face of that city’s location.

The numbers: $15,000+ “Beauty Career Upgrade Package” for the winner (six months membership, private Blueprint session with Bex, photoshoot day, vendor kit, $1,000 cash tax offset), most of it vendor-underwritten. Cost per city ~$16K-$25K, net cost after vendor offset ~$5K-$10K, payback in 1-2 months once chairs fill. One-time brand-wide cost to retroactively crown every existing stylist a “Founding Member” runs ~$25K-$35K across 8 locations.

Sales Concierge — deployed, not launched

bex+Co. is the intended first re-theme target for the Sales Concierge worker once the Design Hacker pilot clears its own blockers. As of the 2026-07-10 status snapshot, the core worker is live and verified end-to-end (real Claude replies in Stefi’s voice, refused a discount probe, magic-link identity greeted a test user by name), but real traffic is held behind three content blockers, not code:

Bex stylist re-theme (pack swap + retheme) is queued as a “next build step” after the Design Hacker pilot’s own first real send, not scheduled yet.

Key numbers at a glance