The beauty industry is booming: in 2017 the US beauty market was valued $532 billion, and it is expected to reach $806 billion by 2023.
Being part of the huge wellness mega-trend that started to spread in our society a decade ago, this growth is characterised by all the contemporary trends that we also find in other areas of consumption: online sales growing exponentially, consumers asking for more personalisation, digital technologies revealing new and exciting opportunities for the business and brick and mortar spaces trying to offer amazing instore experiences.
In this article we are going to focus mainly on this last part, analysing the design and interiors of beauty stores, how brands are telling their stories instore through layout displays, visual merchandising and multichannel strategies.
Even if you are not that much into beauty you have probably noticed a blooming of new, indie and small brands in the sector. We are witnessing a shift in the balance of power, with indie-brands tapping social media influence and e-commerce to steal market share from traditional beauty giants.
Nielsen analysed the differences between direct-to-consumer small brands and big, classic beauty companies, and the differences between their performance online and in physical stores. In fact, while the top 20 cosmetics brands capture 90% of the dollars going to brick-and-mortar retailers, those same companies capture just 14% share online.
This data leads us once again to the important role of an integrated multichannel strategy and the offer of an instore unique experience to fulfil customers’ need of personalization.
This is extremely true for traditional giants of beauty retail, they are still dominating the physical shopping scene, but the number of small and independent brands trying to integrate their strategy with offline sales is growing exponentially.
Top of mind of beauty retailers is Sephora.
The instore strategy of the French brand is characterized by the integration of AI technologies and the digitalization and personalization of the experience, with the online and offline merging together seamlessly.
“At Sephora, digital is in our DNA and we’re constantly thinking about how to make the online and offline shopping experience more seamless for our clients,” said Johanna Marcus, director of mobile and digital store marketing at Sephora. And this philosophy is pretty clear in the stores: their customer-centric and digitally-focused strategy is always changing and proposing new tools to get closer to what clients want.
“Every customer has a highly unique perspective and a personal view on their beauty” Chief Engineering Officer Raghu Sagisaid. “We should be able to provide them a lot of tools that are personalized across all channels. That’s our goal, to be able to make their experience better as well as find a perfect fit for her needs.” Experiences are more powerful, Sagi said, when they seamlessly cross channels.
Sephora offers the possibility to virtually try-on products of different categories, both from customers’ mobiles and from ipad or screens available in the shop.
Sephora’s app once the customer is instore becomes his/her personal assistant, providing information like product recommendations, and suggestions about items users have previously browsed in their beauty profile.
Other than offering a brow bar and hair dresser services, they organize makeup lessons, workshops, events and product launches. The store in this way becomes something different and way more magical than just a place to go and buy that perfume you’ve seen the ad of. It involves senses and emotions and it transforms into a meeting place and a statement of belonging, belonging to the Sephora beauty community.
The design of the store itself is characterized by its signature black and white, with touches of red, colours that are today a ubiquitous part of the beauty retail landscape. “Our overall aesthetic is clean, bold, but not distracting,” says Paul Loux, the senior vice president of store design at Sephora. “We’ve designed our stores to create a natural visual pathway.”
There is a pragmatic reason behind the choice: in a beauty store there are many products, with different packaging, shapes and colours and relatively small in size: having two main colours leading the eye is very practical for a stressless consumer experience, where the customer can easily understand and be led into the designed shopping path.
Other than that black in our society is considered a sophisticated and elegant colour, and it is a great backdrop: “Anything just looks a bit better against a black backdrop. Things feel more exciting and more exclusive and more elegant” says Kit Yarrow, a consumer psychologist. Yarrow notes white can also be “pure and exclusive,” especially when used with black.
Iconic and globally recognized the black and white alternation have become part of the Sephora storefront design.
By using a limited assortment of design and decoration elements Sephora obtained a set of repeatable items that reinforce the brand message and image, maintaining at the same time a different personality in every store.
The finishing of the materials in store is usually glossy, other element that is quite common to find in the beauty sector: there is an accepted aesthetic around simple, minimal, glossy retail interiors,we can nowconsider black lacquer the millennial pink of beauty retail.From a user’s perspective something shiny seems really clean. The appeal of cleanliness (and shine) makes sense: who wants to buy lipstick from a dirty store?
Other than beauty retail giants as Sephora, it looks like almost every brand is trying to have its say by opening its own store. In fact, even if “a large proportion of retailers have struggled to transition from the mindset that a store is only a selling platform, where in fact we’re seeing service-led and a softer sell becoming key strategies to success” says Stefanie Dorfer, retail editor at innovation research and advisory company, Stylus, “this is where beauty is really coming to the fore. Standalone retail spaces enable brands to deliver multiple, full spectrum beauty services that straddle cosmetics and wellbeing under one roof, offering education, experimentation and fully immersive experiences that will not only build loyalty, but ultimately deliver sales.”
Representative of this thought and of the huge impact of beauty industry in consumption is the opening of the Zalando Beauty Station, in Berlin in summer 2018.
Europe’s leading online e-commerce platform for fashion and lifestyle expanded into the beauty category in March of 2018 with a launch in Germany, quickly followed by the Austrian and Polish markets. Building on the success of Zalando’s launch markets, they are expanding into Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium, and Italy within the next two months. The retailer’s merchandise assortment currently includes more than 10,000 products, having grown from 250.
The Beauty Station offers a curated range of products in an experiential environment that serves as a test platform for launches. As stated on Zalando’s website: the 160 sq meter Zalando Beauty Station puts the beauty-savvy customer first: 53 brands, tangible product experiences, a curated range of beauty items, as well as an exciting test platform for launches, tutorials and advice from beauty experts. Service stations offering makeup and nail treatments are also present in the store.
The store is located in the Mitte, the centre of the city. The windows are completely open, a giant glass wall with a big sticker stating “Hallo, Beauty!” (“Hallo” is “Hello” in German).
The feeling entering the store is of a luxurious place, being the cream and light grey alternation the main colours of the space. The finishing of the materials is glossy, in harmonious contrast with the concrete columns of the space.
The concept of the interiors as described on the Batek architekten’s website, the studio in charge of the project: “The space is entirely customisable, offering dynamic arrangements for product presentations, pop-up events, beauty services and video shoots. […] A long shelf, crafted by Smile Plastics from recycled plastic cups, draws the eye and serves as the showcase highlight. Central to the front retail area is an imposing solid concrete wash basin for customer use. Three floor-to-ceiling shelves made from stainless steel divide the shop floor. These pivot, either dividing the area in two with a secluded back area, or opening up the space completely. Drawing the eye to the back of the space is the four metre long stainless steel beauty service table, with retractable mirrors.”
We must say that the concept of the store, astonishing and artistically impeccable, is not entirely translated into the consumer experience. As often happens, there are several factors interfering in the passage between theory and practice. We have been to the store several times, and, not only it is unfortunately often empty (does not help in the experience), but also the warmth of the colours of the space is not matched by the one of the sales assistant. After the opening, there have not been many instore events, classes or workshops, and, as a customer, once instore is not clear where and when the personalization can happen. The space is undoubtedly beautiful, but the multichannel strategy is not really evident anywhere and the space feels cold, like is missing a soul.
Another example of a brand passing from online to offline, with the intent of using the physical space as a medium to convey its own tone of voice and character is Glossier.
Founded as a direct-to-consumer in 2014 by Emily Weiss, Glossier quickly became one of the most talked and successful brand of the past years. Born from bottom-up, coming from all the suggestions and reviews of the beauty community of Into The Gloss (rings a bell?) it is now an established voice of the American beauty market.
At the end of 2018 it opened the first store in NYC, and it is as Glossier as it can get. The interior features pale pink shades, inspired by the company’s rosy branding and packaging.“Transformative, interactive, and honest are the words that defined the design direction, but we found a way to be a little naughty and push the envelope,” said Gachot Studios co-founder Christine Gachot in a project description.
“We introduced a complex, curved plaster detail; a finish that is barely achievable in high-end residential construction, running from the entry and up into the stair portal.”
The ground floor is a gallery for displaying skincare and beauty products, calling eye attention a spongey red sofa that looks like lips runs along one side, while the wall behind has a rippled effect.
“We used colour to highlight the brand experience, mirrors to provoke participation within the space, and millwork shapes that encouraged shared experience and community,” said Gachot.
Products are displayed on cylindrical elements whose tops are ribbed to patch mascaras, lipsticks and other items on show. They also offer the possibility of interacting and testing products, in fact customers are invited to try makeup and skincare in a separate Wet Bar, which features two sinks with products displayed in mirrored cubes behind.
There is also a pick-up counter for customers to collect orders packaged on the second floor, which are delivered directly to the station via a conveyer belt.
This is definitely a good example of integrated online-offline experience, with the store speaking the language of the brand and its community down to the detail.
‘The best stores offer experiential touchpoints to help beauty shoppers decipher the vast levels of information they consume online on their own, as well as catering to their desire for personalisation,’ argues Dorfer. ‘Beauty is incredibly personal, as such, we’re seeing a trend towards self-steered learning and exploration in store. This is where technology has real value.”
Gone is the time when the beauty store was just a place to buy your makeup: they are evolving into spaces for events, skincare tutorials, makeup lessons, a platform for education and a community building space. A place for living a 360 degrees beauty experience.
The beauty sector, for its intrinsic characteristics and product range, is extremely apt to create the experience consumers are today looking for. From big retailers to indie beauty brands, companies seem to act and react with energy and savviness to the so much (too much?) preached retail apocalypse, using and integrated the latest technologies to personalise the consumer experience.
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