Birchbox Launches First Store

Online beauty products retailer Birchbox (New York) opened its first brick-and-mortar store Friday in New York’s SoHo district. The company has brought elements of its online experience in-store with a large touchscreen and four iPads that float around the 4500-square-foot, duplex-styled space for customers to use.

Birchbox co-founder and co-ceo Katia Beauchamp told Adweek the physical store concept was designed using “the insight and feedback from our hundreds of thousands of [digital] customers to better understand what makes them tick, and create a customer-first, holistic offline shopping experience.” She added that Birchbox’s online platform “uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to personalize product recommendations and samples for subscribers and shoppers — and this same model will be applied to the offline retail experience.”

Apps on in-store devices help customers identify products that meet their wants and needs based on personal criteria such as skin tone and hair color. In-store electronic media will also feature text-based content, videos and digital product reviews. Birchbox tested the offline retail waters recently, opening five pop-ups for brief periods in New York and the Hamptons.