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Service: Restyle (12+ weeks)
When: Thursday 24 September at 10:15
Barber: Michael Reed
Length: 45 min
Price: £33

You are looking at a live demo

Demo Barber is not a real shop. The barbers, the customers and every booking in the diary are invented. Everything else is the real thing: the same code a paying barbershop runs, on its own web address, sending its own email.

How to try it

Book the way a customer would. Pick a service, then a barber, then a time. Every step is a real page at a real address - watch the bar at the top of the browser change as you go, and try the back button.

Use your own email at the last step. The confirmation that lands in your inbox is the one a real customer gets, with a real add-to-calendar file attached to it.

Book as much as you like. The whole diary is wiped and rebuilt every night, so nothing you do here inconveniences anybody.

Nobody will answer the telephone. The number in the header is one reserved for television and film, so it can never ring a real person. The address is Buckingham Palace for the same reason.

What to look for

The price and the length change with the barber. The directors charge more and take longer than the newest barber, and the diary knows it. Pick a different barber and watch the times move.

Anyone, first available. For the customer who does not mind who cuts their hair. It offers every slot any barber can do, and picks one for them.

Only free time is offered. Availability is worked out from the shop's hours, each barber's own hours, what is already in their book and how long the service actually takes.

The whole look came from two colours. This shop's skin was derived rather than hand-built, which is the reason a website is included in the price rather than a line on the invoice.

It works with JavaScript switched off. One-handed, on a phone, on a bad connection. Nothing on this site waits for a script before it will show you a list of times.

No commission, and no marketplace. The customer is the shop's own, the booking is the shop's own, and nobody is advertising the barber down the road underneath it.