# Introduction Beauty Router is the beauty commerce layer: one neutral connection between salon software and the brands and distributors that supply salons. You connect your salon app to Beauty Router once. Your users can then discover, reorder, and pay for professional products from every brand and distributor on the platform, without leaving your app. Beauty Router is the layer your salon app plugs into, not a rival product. You keep the relationship with the salon, brands and distributors keep their data, and salons get neutral access to every supplier. ## Who it is for This documentation is for software companies that build salon software. Three parties take part: - **Salon apps (you):** the software salons use to run their business. You connect your salon app to Beauty Router. - **Salons and professionals (your users):** salons, spas, and licensed professionals who use your salon app. They order products through it. - **Brands and distributors:** the companies that supply salons. They receive the orders and ship the products. Salons reach Beauty Router only through a connected salon app. ## Why integrate Salon professionals do not want another destination. They want to order the products they work with inside the app they already use to run their salon, and that app is yours. Building a wholesale marketplace yourself takes years of work: a unified product catalog, product matching, license verification, payments, sales tax, diversion control, and a relationship with every brand and distributor. Beauty Router already runs all of that. New brands and distributors join Beauty Router, not your salon app, so one integration reaches all of them, and you keep control of your users and your interface. ## Who does what Beauty Router runs: - **Product catalog.** One unified catalog across brands and distributors, with consistent product data. - **Professional verification.** Checks business and professional licenses and the EIN, and catches fake, expired, and stolen licenses. - **Payments.** Charges the salon's card for each order and handles refunds. - **Sales tax.** Calculates and collects sales tax across US states. - **Exemption certificates.** Reviews exemption certificates, so salons that qualify buy without sales tax. - **Order routing.** Sends each order to the brand or distributor that ships it. - **Delivery tracking.** Follows each shipment and reports the tracking to you and your users. - **Cancellations and status updates.** Handles cancellations and keeps the status of every order current. - **Compliance.** Covers regulatory rules and prevents product diversion, which large professional brands require. You own: - **Your users.** You keep the relationship with each salon, and you decide who can reach Beauty Router. - **Your interface.** Your screens and navigation stay yours. Beauty Router's interface appears inside them. - **Where the marketplace appears.** You choose the screens of your salon app where each part of the marketplace opens. Beauty Router is the merchant of record for every order. It charges the card, collects sales tax, handles refunds, and sends the order emails to your users in your app's name. ## What the current API covers 1. **[Logging in a user](/authentication/).** Your server sends your app token and the user's details, and gets back a user token. The same call works for new and returning users. 2. **[The catalog](/catalog/).** You download the full product list, then a daily delta with the changes from the last 24 hours. You can also search the catalog and read the details of one product over the API. 3. **[Product matching](/product-matching/).** You send the products from your salon app. Beauty Router returns an ID for each one, adds the ones it does not have yet to the catalog, and tells you by webhook when each one is matched. 4. **[Company settings and verification](/companies/).** You show Beauty Router's verification page inside your salon app, or send the salon's company data through the API. Prices and checkout open once the review lets the salon order. You can also collect the [services](/companies/#services) the salon offers, to personalize the marketplace. 5. **[The embedded marketplace](/embedded-marketplace/).** A JavaScript library places Beauty Router's interface in your salon app. It has functions that show the main page, the cart, the checkout, favorites, order history, one order, order tracking, payment cards, supplier profiles, and product details. 6. **[Orders](/orders/).** A callback in the page runs when a user places an order. [Webhooks](/webhooks/) send later updates, such as status and tracking, to your server. Through the API you can [create orders](/create-orders/) from your own New order page, list orders, read one, cancel it, and change its delivery address. 7. **[Emails](/emails/).** Beauty Router emails your users about orders and verification, with your app's name, logo, and color. 8. **[Suppliers](/suppliers/).** You list the suppliers of a salon location, read their profiles, archive them, and estimate delivery times. The [conventions](/conventions/) page covers IDs, money, paging, and errors for every endpoint. ## What the current API does not cover - **Self-serve app registration.** Every integration starts with a conversation. You connect with the Beauty Router team and discuss the details before you start working with the API. See [Access and support](/support/). - **User roles.** Beauty Router has no roles. You know which of your users may use which feature, so you handle that on your side and show Beauty Router's screens only to the users who may see them. Two flags help: [`canOrder`](/authentication/#users-who-cannot-order) lets a user view the marketplace without placing orders, and [`canManageCompany`](/authentication/#users-who-cannot-change-company-settings) lets a user read company settings without changing them. - **The marketplace over the API.** The API does not cover browsing or the cart. Building those yourself would take a huge effort: search across every brand, personalized pages, carts split by supplier, and hundreds of endpoints to connect them. So Beauty Router builds the marketplace, and your users browse in Beauty Router's interface inside your salon app. - **Native mobile components.** You can show the marketplace in a web view inside your mobile app. Native components are not available yet. If you need an endpoint the API does not have, write to [dev@beautyrouter.com](mailto:dev@beautyrouter.com). ## Commission Beauty Router pays you a commission on orders your users place. You can discuss the terms with the Beauty Router team: [book a call](https://beautyrouter.com/contacts/#schedule).