Allure Store Turns The Page On Experiential Retail

Developed in partnership with STÔUR Group, the standalone store will embody the future of the retail experience and span 2,900 square feet over two floors. Crafted to reflect and integrate the Condé Nast platform’s unparalleled experience and expertise across the beauty category, the store will stock a highly curated selection of over 280 makeup, haircare and skincare products from more than 150 brands including industry luminaries Neutrogena, Danessa Myricks, La Roche-Posay, Dermalogica, and Bobbi Brown, Tatcha, Charlotte Tilbury, as well as newcomers like Meloway, which makes mascara, and Naturally Drenched, a haircare line. 

The high-tech, expert-recommended and editor-favorited retail occasion offers shoppers a 360-degree immersive experience led by the trusted editorial voice of Allure by bringing the pages and online content of Allure into a physical retail space. The innovative new store’s shelves will serve as a physical mirror to Allure’s content themes, drawing inspiration from such content features as the publication’s “Best of Beauty Awards” winning products, and the beauty products in stock will also be rotated seasonally.  Brands pay a small fee to Allure to be featured in the store, and in exchange, brands benefit from the increased brand awareness and visibility, access to store data analytics and sales profits. Products are merchandised by category commonalities such as skincare, haircare, and makeup instead of by brand, and are grouped under magazine-style “headlines,” such as “Here’s How to Get Soft, Dewy Skin All Year Long,” creating a unique shopping experience. Allure capitalizes on consumers' familiarity with QR codes, allowing shoppers to scan each product and find information on the product, links to the corresponding brand’s social media, and where the product was featured within the Allure content family. The store will implement augmented reality capabilities for customers to try on products, as well as smart mirrors, and will be a hub for content creation. Outside of the shopping occasion, Allure’s editorial team plans to regularly host in-store events, tutorials and masterclasses hosted by beauty influencers like Deepica Mutyala, among others, within the new space. 

In addition to tapping its own highly regarded editorial team for product curation and merchandising, Allure is working with Aurora James, founder of the 15% Pledge, to reach the goal that 15 percent of the brands showcased in the innovative new retail experience are from Black-owned businesses. 

The Allure store’s innovative approach to merchandising, and the platform’s unique leveraging of its own editorial authority over a specific category, highlights the new ways brands can execute on an omnichannel retail strategy. Allure’s content family spans more than just a magazine and website, it also boasts two podcasts, a subscription beauty box, and a suite of social platforms. By integrating a physical retail experience into its suite of offerings, the brand will only continue to draw more shoppers into its universe.