Choosing where to go shouldn't be this hard

Every existing option answers a question nobody is really asking. Maps tell you what is nearby. Review sites tell you what is popular. Booking platforms tell you what has a free slot at 2pm.

None of them answer the question people actually have, which is closer to: I’ve got thick curly hair, I want to grow it out without it looking scruffy, I can spend about seventy dollars, I’m near Brighton, and I don’t want to sit in a loud room for an hour. Where should I go?

Nearby and popular are not the same as right

A salon can be excellent and still be the wrong choice for you. It might not cut your hair type. Its cheapest appointment might be three times your budget. It might be a bright, busy, social room when you wanted somewhere quiet. It might be brilliant at colour and average at cutting.

None of that shows up in a star rating, and all of it decides whether you walk out happy.

What we optimise for

Suitability. Not popularity, not proximity, not who spent the most on advertising — because we don’t sell advertising. A 4.6-rated curl specialist should beat a 4.9-rated generalist for someone with curls, and on RightForMe it does.

That means treating the result someone wants as first-class information. “Haircut” is far too broad to be useful. A low taper, a grown-out scissor cut and a curly cut are different skills, and businesses are genuinely better at some than others.

How we behave

• No paid placement. A business cannot buy a position, and claiming a profile is free.
• Every recommendation explains itself. If we can’t tell you why something suits you, we haven’t earned the recommendation.
• We publish the drawbacks. Over budget, books out three weeks ahead, up a flight of stairs — those belong on the card, not buried.
• We would rather show you less. When the good matches run out we stop and say so, instead of padding the page.
• We don’t overstate what we know. A precise-looking score on a vague search is a lie told with a number.

Where we are today

We’re starting with Melbourne, across hair, beauty, skin and wellness, and building coverage suburb by suburb rather than claiming a national footprint we don’t have. Profiles currently on the site are clearly-labelled samples used to build and test the product — our data standards explain exactly how that works and what we refuse to do.

The architecture is built for other cities, countries, currencies and languages, but we would rather be genuinely useful in one city than superficially present in fifty.

For businesses

If you run a salon, barber shop, clinic or studio, RightForMe works best when your own information is on it. Claiming is free, and setting your real services, prices and specialties means you get matched to the people you actually want in your chair — and fewer of the ones you don’t. More for business owners.