For UK salon, barber and clinic owners tired of watching the diary go quiet
Turn unbooked chairs into business purchasing power.
The chair nobody books, the room that sits quiet, the Tuesday morning that never fills — put that time to work and earn Silva to spend across the network.
An empty hour is paid for whether it earns or not — so put it to work and spend it back.
No cash changes hands for Silva · You choose exactly which slots you offer · UK members only
Sound familiar?
You didn't set out to find a capacity exchange. You set out to fix these.
Every salon and clinic owner feels at least one of these. Almost none connect them to the one asset they're already sitting on — the quiet time on the floor.
Do chairs and rooms sit empty midweek?
Quiet mornings and slow weekdays you can never quite fill.
Are your team on the clock regardless?
Stylists and therapists are paid for the hour whether it books or not.
Do last-minute cancellations sting?
A no-show at four o'clock is a slot that can't be sold again.
Is retail stock sitting on the shelf?
Capital tied up in product that turns over slowly.
Is chasing new clients eating the budget?
Paying more and more for ads and offers just to keep the diary full.
Are costs and overheads climbing?
Rent, stock and wages creep up — the diary doesn't always follow.
What almost everyone misses
The unbooked chairs, the quiet rooms, the slow mornings — that empty time is real value already sitting inside your salon. Silvatree is the mechanism that turns that quiet chair-and-room time into business purchasing power you can spend.
The idea
One week’s work. Two pots, not one.
The old way: work hard, cash in, cash out, bills paid, nothing left. With Silvatree you generate the same cash, but you also fill a second pot by selling idle capacity to Silvatree members. The two-pot way is: cash in, less cash out, some cash remaining — and Silva in, Silva out, paying the rest of the bills. The second pot is business purchasing power.
Wages, rent and tax drain it. A full week of work — and nothing left to show for it.
Your cash pays the expenses that can only be paid in cash — rent, wages, electricity, leases, taxes. A second pot fills from idle capacity you'd have wasted, and pays for marketing, repairs, printing, accounting, cleaning and tradesmen.
1 Silva = £1 for tax & accounting · spending power inside the network, never exchanged for cash.
How it works
Three steps, from empty chair to purchasing power.
You have spare capacity
Unbooked chairs, quiet treatment rooms, slow weekday mornings — time your team is paid for that expires unsold by closing.
Silvatree puts it to work
We match the slots you choose to offer to members who need them. You earn Silva for chair and room time that earned you nothing before.
You spend your Silva
On the things your salon already pays for — marketing, accounting, décor and refits, professional services — keeping your cash in the bank.
New to the idea? What is a Capacity Exchange?
Your kind of spare capacity
Find the spare capacity inside your salon or clinic.
If something on your floor goes to waste when it isn't booked, it belongs here. These are the places it usually hides.
Quiet weekday hours
The slow slots before the after-work rush — paid for whether they book or not.
Unbooked stylist time
A gap between clients is an hour of skill that expires unsold.
Quiet room hours
A room standing empty still costs you rent, heat and light.
Late no-shows
A slot that drops out at the last minute can never be filled again.
Building a column
A new therapist or treatment with space to fill while word gets round.
Slow-moving stock
Product sitting on the shelf, tying up cash until it sells.
The January lull
Fixed costs don't take a month off when the diary goes quiet.
Practice hours
Time already set aside for training that could earn its keep.
Why it's safer
Business trading, without the borrowed money.
Most trade exchanges quietly let the owner/operator run up a large negative trade balance it never has to repay — diluting the value of every other member’s credits. Silvatree is built so that can never happen.
We can never owe the network
Silvatree's own accounts have a hard zero floor. We can't hold a negative balance or extend ourselves a line of credit — full stop.
Silva is earned, never printed
A Silva only exists because a real trade happened between two members. It can't be created out of thin air or bought for cash.
A Reserve Fund stands behind you
If a member ever leaves owing, the Reserve Fund absorbs it immediately — so positive balances stay protected whatever happens next.
If we ever wind down, we go last
Our own balance is wiped out first, leaving more in the pot for members. We put the network ahead of ourselves by design.
How we prove it
Our ledger is built so the network always sums to zero.
This isn't a choice — it's how we protect the system, and it's how the ledger was constructed. Here's what that means for your balance.
The network always sums to zero. Every Silva earned is a Silva owed — the whole system balances to nothing, by construction.
No outsized balances. No member is allowed to sit on a large positive or negative position that could destabilise the network.
Silvatree's own accounts are always positive. The company can never hold a negative balance. It can never owe the system. It cannot issue itself Silva — it can only earn it like every other member. Both the rules and the platform architecture enforce this.
These rules are set out in the Silvatree Exchange Terms & Conditions — the rules the whole network runs on.
Straight talk on fees
Three fees. The same for every member.
There are no tiers at Silvatree — no bronze, silver or gold, and no badge attached to how much you trade. Every member pays the same three fees, worked out the same way, and what you pay turns on one thing: how much of your existing spending you decide to route through the network. Charging by size of business would be arbitrary, because a large firm might trade very little and a small one a great deal. A flat fee would mean the smallest members subsidise the largest.
Joining fee
2%
of the spending you declare
- Minimum £200, maximum £6,000
- Paid once, on admission
Monthly subscription
£20
a month, plus 0.2% of your declared spend ÷ 12
- £24.17 a month on a £25,000 declaration
- £20 more in months you put nothing into the network
Transaction fee
6% + 1%
in cash, and in Silva
- Paid by the seller on each exchange
- The 1% in Silva funds the Reserve Fund
That is the whole structure. There is nothing else to pay — no tier to upgrade to, no charge for finding you buyers, and no fee for closing your account.
- ✓All fees are exclusive of VAT.
- ✓We never charge interest on Trading Headroom, and never take security or personal guarantees.
- ✓If a full year of genuine engagement has not delivered, we refund your joining fee.
What members say
From members
“I joined Silvatree 2 months ago and have already accumulated three new clients for my digital marketing services.”
I have been able to go from operating at 50% capacity to 75% and have subsequently been able to use my Silva to pay for a business coach who is helping me to scale my business and attract more clients, as well as paying for my accounting services and bookkeeping.
“As accountants we have experienced a great influx of new clients that we would never have previously had.”
This has increased our bottom line, and enabled us to help many who would otherwise not have had the cash to pay for our services — which means we can pay for many business expenses in Silva that we would otherwise have paid for in cash.
Questions
Salons & clinics: common questions
- What counts as spare capacity for a salon or clinic?
- The time your team is paid for whether it books or not: unbooked chairs, quiet treatment-room hours, slow weekday mornings and last-minute cancellations. A gap in the diary expires unsold by closing, which is precisely what makes it worth putting to work.
- Do we choose which appointments we offer?
- Yes — you pick exactly which slots go on the exchange, so you can keep your busy evenings and weekends for regular clients and only release the quiet midweek hours that usually go empty.
- What can we spend the Silva we earn on?
- On what the salon already buys from other members — marketing, accounting, décor and refits, and professional services. Silva is a unit of account (1 Silva = £1 for your records); it's spending power inside the network, never cash you withdraw.
- Does taking Silva mean discounting our prices?
- No. You're filling time that would otherwise earn nothing, not cutting your rates for cash clients — the chair or room is paid for either way, so quiet hours simply start earning. We cover how it works, with your numbers, on a suitability call.
Silvatree works across sectors
One model, told through the spare capacity in each industry.
- Hotels & staysMidweek rooms, off-season nights and unsold spa slots.
- RestaurantsQuiet midweek covers and dark private dining rooms.
- RetailSlow-moving stock, quiet hours and empty shelf space.
- Print & productionIdle press hours, quiet studio and finishing time.
- Media & outdoorUnsold billboards, unbooked airtime and blank pages.
- Trades & servicesGaps between jobs, cancelled bookings and quiet weeks.
- Professional servicesUnbilled hours, bench time and quiet post-year-end weeks.
Find out if Silvatree is right for your business.
Book a free suitability call. We run an expense analysis, share a capacity & profit report, and tell you honestly whether it's a fit — we'll be the first to say if it isn't.
Not ready to join? No pressure. Go on our standby list and we'll get in touch whenever there's business we can send your way.
Not sure yet? Take the 2-minute readiness test.
Short of time? Talk it through with our AI capacity adviser — available 24/7. It'll cover most of what we'd discuss on the call.