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A BLENDED RETAIL REALITY Outlook


As beauty retailers bring a digital experience in-store and more human interactions online, the future of commerce is unified


E


ighteen months on from the first confirmed cases in Wuhan, few could have predicted the scale of the impact that Covid-19 would have on lives and businesses. For the beauty industry, the changes within retail have been dramatic, and debate over the role of both physical and online retail has accelerated.


A recurring theme is that the future of beauty retail will be defined less by individual channels, and more by a unified shopper experience. The creation of a seamless strategy will be increasingly important for beauty retailers as they aim to create integrated and memorable experiences for consumers across real-world and online stores. “People will experience the physical or virtual space as they please, without problems of space or time,” says Fiona Sartoretto Verna, owner of Sartoretto Verna, noting that hybrid stores will be designed with new generations in mind, for whom living online is part of daily life. “The design will be more playful and interactive, not just a boring expo of thousands of products,” she says.


From embracing formats that make the physical experience more seamless, such as vending, click and collect and local hubs, to the creation of content-rich phygital experiences that connect consumers to communities, retailers have already started to explore how to bridge the gap between


FORECAST GLOBAL VALUE & GROWTH, 2O21-2022


Health & beauty specialist retailers 2021


$1.3 trillion +4.9


2022


$1.4 trillion +5.0


Beauty and personal care e-commerce 2021


$68.6bn +7.5


Source: Euromonitor International 2022


$76.4bn +11.3


The Future Laboratory’s Beauty, Health & Wellness Futures online event will take place on 17 June featuring a programme of practical insights, exclusive debates and discussions, and a summary of the new beauty and wellness trends. Tickets are available at thefuturelaboratory.com/events/beauty-health-wellness-futures-2021


Clinique Lab is an immersive experience which gives consumers access to three virtual rooms where they can explore ingredients and benefits of its new Even Better Clinical Serum Foundation, attend virtual skin classes and engage in live chats


their online and offline offer. One way is to look to the integration of social shopping in the physical environment, says Michelle Smith, Executive Business Director of Landor & Fitch. “The Burberry Social Store, which launched in 2019 in Shenzhen, China, is powered by Tencent technology merging social media interactions and bringing them into a physical environment to drive engagement, desire, personalised content and experiences, and build communities online and offline. Thinking about new customer behaviours which have emerged and accelerated in the last 12 months, The Burberry Social offers a real benchmark in integrating social and e-commerce into the physical experience,” she says.


The human touch


Alongside this trend is another that brings human experiences into the e-commerce space. Jonathan Chippindale, CEO of Holition, says: “Over the course of the pandemic, we have seen an uptake in the interactive and immersive virtual stores concept, which allows brands to do digitally what they currently can’t do in the physical world – fusing together the best of both the tech-driven and human experience into a space that can deliver a convenient, shoppable, and seamless digital retail experience.” An example is the new Clinique Lab (left), one of Holition’s recent projects .


As beauty retailers and brands adapt their businesses following the pandemic, their focus will be on meeting consumers where they are today, and how they want to shop tomorrow. Retailers will rewrite the rules, and the first draft has begun


EXPERT INSIGHT: THE FUTURE LABORATORY


Livvy Houghton, Senior Creative Researcher at strategic foresight consultancy, The Future Laboratory, tells Cosmetics Business what could emerge from the great retail shake-up


“Retail has experienced some of the most significant change throughout the pandemic. While many have described it as the death of retail or the retail apocalypse, what’s actually happened is retail has been repurposed. What was once our main path to purchase – the physical store – will increasingly become a space for exclusive experiences, content creation and entertainment, much like Morphe and Old Spice have done. Consequently, e-commerce has become the default purchase avenue. But brands are looking beyond mindless transactions and creating more meaningful routes to purchase – like Dior’s digital replica of its Champs-Élysée store or Zalando’s phygital quest. As people emerge from long term lockdowns, out of home experiences will require


more consideration. It won’t be a ‘pop to the shop’ situation, it will have deeper purpose and will be embraced by those who want to connect and engage with a brand on a more intimate level.”


18 cosmetics business May 2021


cosmeticsbusiness.com


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