Adore Beauty, Southland

Australian online shoppers have swooped to Adore Beauty for its extensive product selection, reliable shipping, exceptional customer service, and thoughtful extras (like Tim Tam biscuits). But after 25 years of online-only retailing, Adore Beauty have showed their commitment to enhancing the customer experience moving into bricks and mortar stores addressing customer feedback.

I went to visit their physical store at Westfield Southland as my first experience with the brand. I was accompanying Norrelle Goldring who had a thorough understanding of the brand and its online experience. But I had not explored their online store prior to this visit. I’m a new customer who will experience in-store first. So what were my main outtakes?

Just a few doors from Mecca, the store exterior presented a very open but different persona – a clean traditional beauty feel with clean white walls and terrazzo flooring and horizontal surface finishes, curiously awash with digital screens in windows and all shopper bays (walls, gondola’s, tables)
The store had an easy to shop layout, much like you’d expect from a good website built for SEO optimisation. Product categories wrapped around the store perimeter; Skincare, Haircare, and Fragrance, with Wellness, Beauty, and customer experience in the heart zones (gondolas and counters).
I appreciated the Beauty gondola bays with user friendly very slightly tilted vertical shelves with an excellent amount of product testing opportunities.
Like you see in website design, Adore Beauty branding was minimal. The store was all about products and services. The interaction with the branding was more with the customer service team.
The signage (static light boxes) called out ‘Team favourites’, ‘As seen in Beauty IQ’, ‘Trending’, ‘New products’, and ‘Heros’.
Portrait digital screens called out shopper incentives like ‘Spend & Earn’.

From the store exterior, I was struck by the amount of blue screen domination. But as I went into store to shop, I very much appreciated the screens with vendor (brand) range information and the all-important pricing information. I loved this functional yet visually disruptive feature. As a shopper and retail marketing lover, I am consistently frustrated with a lack of simple pricing. That’s one of the reasons I choose to shop online, because instore you often need to ask the cost of an item. Physical beauty stores generally frustrate me – I mean, are they pretty galleries or shops?!

All digital signage is maintained at HO, but the store manager could also update at store level.
The product range included a small selection of what the online platform sold (only 50 brands showcased from 300 brands online). But there was a digital kiosk where you could shop the full range.
The OBSERV skin analysing system was at the back of the store, a bit like “if you know, you know”. As an instore shopper I would have appreciated this being a feature as an integral part of the shopper journey to help guide product recommendations.
Also towards the rear of the store was a vibrant yellow counter with a premium 2pack enamel finish. Shoppers can use the smart lighting mirrors to trial products alone or with the guidance of the store team.

I left the store thinking that I wanted to know more about Adore Beauty’s extensive offer online but appreciated this disruptive “new kid on the bricks and mortar block”. It gave me a premium yet “open to all” feeling (not for young, or middle aged, or expensive or budget), which is difficult to master in the beauty environment.