"We're about to hit 100,000 customers on Shopify officially... which is 1% of the Irish population." — Liam, Co-founder, The Hot Box Sauna
Since joining Easy Appointment Booking in late 2022, The Hot Box Sauna has:
- 100K customers booked with 3x year-over-year growth from 2023 to 2025
- Over €3M in booking revenue through a single Shopify store
- 9 locations across Ireland and the Caribbean
A sauna on a trailer
In 2021, three friends — Dan, Liam, and Luke — built a sauna on a trailer and parked it by the River Boyne in County Meath. It was the middle of COVID, but people needed a reason to get outside and feel good. That trailer was the beginning of The Hot Box Sauna.
What started as a lockdown experiment quickly became something bigger. The trio studied sauna culture in Finland, Estonia, and New York City — importing an entire wellness tradition to Ireland and making it their own.
By late 2022, they had two locations running in Sligo and Meath and were searching for a booking system that could keep up with their ambitions. They found Easy Appointment Booking on Shopify and got 160 bookings by the end of the year. It was just the beginning.
The challenge: Scaling a physical experience business
The Hot Box team had a problem most founders would love to have — demand was outpacing their ability to manage it. But scaling a sauna business isn't like scaling software. Every new location means hiring and rostering new staff, configuring unique session types, managing capacity for physical spaces, and making sure thousands of customers can book without friction.
Multiple locations, one brand
Each Hot Box location has its own character. Killiney Beach sits on Dublin's coastline. Carlingford is tucked into the mountains. Bolands Mills occupies a restored industrial landmark in the Dublin Docklands. But a customer in Cork shouldn't have to navigate a different booking experience than someone in Sligo. One brand means one experience — regardless of which location they choose.
Rapid expansion with limited admin overhead
Opening a new location every few months meant the booking system couldn't require weeks of configuration each time. The team needed to replicate a working setup, adapt it for local staff and schedules, and go live fast — without pulling the founders away from running the business.
Evolving business models
What started as simple session bookings evolved into something far more complex: multi-session bundles, peak and off-peak pricing, women's-only sessions, brand partnerships, corporate wellness packages, and full membership subscriptions. Every few months, The Hot Box had a new idea — and they needed a booking system that wouldn't hold them back.
The solution: One platform that kept up
Easy Appointment Booking became the operational backbone of The Hot Box Sauna. Every new location, every new session type, every new business model — all running through a single Shopify store.
"Our customers want it to be simple — land on the page, go to the location they want, pick their date and seats, and check out." — Liam, Co-founder, The Hot Box Sauna
Multi-location management from a single store
All locations — from Sligo to Cork — run through one Shopify store with Easy Appointments handling the scheduling logic. Customers select their preferred location, browse available sessions, and book in seconds. Behind the scenes, each location maintains its own staff schedules, capacity limits, and session types.
The expansion timeline tells the story:
From two sites on day one to nine locations — each one live and taking bookings within days of setup. The model has since expanded internationally through a franchise in Jamaica, proving the booking infrastructure works beyond Ireland too.
Location-based portals and staggered schedules
The Hot Box Sauna was the first merchant we partnered with to build location-based portals — dedicated dashboards where each site's manager runs their own team, services, and bookings while leadership keeps a unified view. We also built customised reporting to measure operations by location: occupancy rates, staffing efficiency, no-show tracking, and marketing opportunities at a glance.
The Hot Box Sauna also uses staggered start times rather than on-the-hour sessions to smooth customer flow. When Bolands Mills is processing over 2,000 bookings per week, session cadence matters.
Peak and off-peak pricing
Friday evenings and weekend mornings fill up fast. Midweek afternoons have spare capacity. Easy Appointments lets The Hot Box price accordingly — premium rates during high-demand windows, discounted slots to fill quieter periods. The same logic extends to bundles: customers choose peak or off-peak session packs, giving regulars a reason to shift their habits and keeping occupancy high across the week.
70 active services, zero headaches
The Hot Box Sauna runs 70 different bookable services and events across their locations — standard sauna sessions, cold plunge experiences, private hires, group bookings, women's-only sessions, and seasonal events. Easy Appointments handles the scheduling complexity behind the scenes, so customers only see what's available at their chosen location and time. No manual calendar juggling.
"We surveyed our customers... 90% said 'no, it's great the way it is.' They don't care about an app. They just want ease of use. Customer first." — Denner, Operations & Finance Director, The Hot Box Sauna
Packages and memberships that never stopped evolving
The Hot Box Sauna's packaging strategy iterated fast: session bundles, peak/off-peak tiers, a Whoop brand partnership, women's-only packs, then full membership subscriptions (3, 6, and 12-month plans). The B2B channel followed — Wellhub corporate integration, staff wellness packages, and loyalty bundles.
Shopify Customer Accounts tied it together — giving members a self-service portal to view sessions, manage memberships, reschedule, and rebook. Every new package type opened a new revenue stream without custom development.
Klaviyo integration for branded communications
The Hot Box Sauna uses Easy Appointments' Klaviyo integration for branded booking confirmations, reminders, and post-visit surveys. Post-session emails capture feedback and drive repeat bookings — turning a transactional touchpoint into a relationship-building moment.
40+ staff, one system
Across The Hot Box Sauna — operations, finance, marketing, and frontline staff — over 40 team members use Easy Appointments daily. Local managers adjust schedules. Session hosts manage walk-ins. When a platform is that embedded across an organisation, it's not a tool. It's how you run the business.
The results: Growth that speaks for itself
10x revenue growth
"Revenue grew from €2k/day to €20k/day since starting with Easy Appointments." — Liam, Co-founder, The Hot Box Sauna
Over €3M in booking revenue, all processed through their Shopify store with Easy Appointments. No separate platform. No manual invoicing. One system from browse to book to payment.
163 to 100,000+ bookings
The growth curve speaks for itself:
What started with 163 bookings in the final three days of 2022 turned into consistent 3x year-over-year growth. In 2025, The Hot Box Sauna crossed the 100,000 booking milestone — and the trajectory is still climbing.
10% more revenue per booking — from one feature
Using Easy Appointments' in-app upsell feature, The Hot Box Sauna added water bottles, towels, and essentials to the booking flow — one click, fully synced with Shopify inventory across all locations. That single change grew average revenue per booking by nearly 10%. No extra friction. No extra steps. Just more revenue from every session already being booked.
A €2M flagship, launched on the same platform
In September 2025, The Hot Box opened Bolands Mills in Dublin's Docklands — a €2M investment and Ireland's first wheelchair-accessible sauna facility. It's now processing over 2,000 bookings per week. The flagship launched on the same Easy Appointments setup that powers every other location — no migration, no separate system, no downtime.
24,000 customers every month
The Hot Box Sauna now serves around 24,000 customers each month across their network — booked, confirmed, reminded, and managed through Easy Appointments. With a 49% new customer rate, half of every month's bookings come from first-timers. The other half? Regulars coming back on packages and memberships.
The partnership: They made Easy Appointments better
Delivering simplicity for the customer requires serious complexity on the back end. A frictionless booking experience across nine locations with 70 services, staggered schedules, tiered pricing, packages, and memberships — that's multi-faceted enterprise software. Easy Appointments met the mark, and The Hot Box Sauna helped us get there.
Their feature requests shaped the product directly: admin booking tools, location-based reporting, staggered and flexible availability configurations, and the entire package system. They pushed us to build things we hadn't considered — and the platform is better for every merchant because of it.
"The value of a reschedule and cancellation ability self-serve through the links, the packages, and in the accounts — the more we go out to competitors they don't have it all unified together. And we look really cool." — Luke, Co-founder, The Hot Box Sauna
When twelve people across an organisation — from CFO to session host — are on first-name terms with your support team, that's not a vendor relationship. That's a partnership.
What's next
The Hot Box Sauna isn't slowing down. With a franchise already live in the Caribbean and more locations on the map, the ambition is global. Their sister company Aalto Saunas handcrafts every sauna in Ireland. The team is growing. The brand is expanding.
From a trailer by the River Boyne to 1% of Ireland's population as customers. We're proud to power what's behind it. Here's to the next 100,000.
Running a multi-location service business on Shopify? Book a demo to see how Easy Appointment Booking can scale with you — from one location to nine and beyond.
