'When I was 29, I lived in Boston and had to drive 30 miles to get my M.A.C. lipstick,' said Marla Beck, who owns Bluemercury with her husband, Barry Beck. 'It was frustrating. In 1999 you couldn't find what you wanted, which was a friendly neighborhood store that sold highly selective cosmetics and skin care products.'
That problem may no longer exist.
Urban dwellers are used to seeing a Gap and bank on every block. Today they may also find beauty emporiums like Sephora, Space NK, Bluemercury, Ulta and Harmon.
Sephora, the glossy black-and-white chain that first opened domestically in SoHo in 1998, changed the way many New Yorkers and others bought makeup. Now owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Sephora was founded in France by Dominique Mandonnaud in 1970. It dominates the beauty boutique business, with some 1,300 stores in 27 countries, over 300 of those across North America, including Brooklyn's first, which opened in November on Joralemon Street, and a new one in Forest Hills, Queens. The company has 430-plus spots in J. C. Penney.
Ulta is another huge contender. The company unveiled its vision for beautification in Chicago in 1990. 'Our founders came from a drugstore background,' said Alex Lelli, senior vice president for growth and development for Ulta. 'Our prototype is a 10,000-square-foot store that offers over 20,000 SKUs from more than 500 brands.' SKU (pronounced skew) stands for stock-keeping unit, a.k.a. a product, or in Ulta's case, a service as well. 'We're a prestige, mass-merchandise and salon experience,' Mr. Lelli said. 'Think Home Depot for women.'
In 2013 Ulta opened 125 stores in the United States, for a total of 675, with plans to open 100 more in 2014. Bluemercury opened 8 stores, bringing its total to 47, with 12 to 14 more scheduled to open this year and another 20 to 25 projected in 2015. And last August, Harmon, a subsidiary of Bed Bath & Beyond, opened a 10,500-plus-square-foot store selling 20,000 beauty items on 21st and Avenue of the Americas.
Nicky Kinnaird, owner of Space NK, said the help-yourself approach at all these places has proved superior to the traditional service counters of department stores.
'If you look in your bag or your bathroom cabinets, you have different brands with different price points,' Ms. Kinnaird said. 'Those products resonated with individuals who were at completely different odds with how beauty was being retailed.'
Ms. Kinnaird, who grew up in Northern Ireland, opened her first Space NK in 1993 in London. In 2007, Space NK migrated to Greene Street in SoHo. Today, there are 23 shops in the United States and 63 in Britain.
'You had department stores with their mono-brand counters and sales associates versed in what they represented, but not in what else was out there,' she said. 'It wasn't in their best interest to refer you to other counters. I don't believe one brand offers a top-to-toe solution for one customer. But that's how department stores are structured.' (At least one, though, may be restructuring: Recently, a handful of Nordstrom stores began organizing and categorizing their offerings by brands along with product type and trends.) At Sephora and its competitors, employees are trained to sell all products. The commission model is disfavored. And merchandise is not developed in a boardroom but often chosen by staff members who comb the globe for the next big thing, like the $16 Tangle Teezer hair brush sold at Space NK.
'We identify and nurture niche innovators within the beauty world and edit products down to what we feel is important to our customer,' said Ms. Kinnaird, who sees this as an advantage over Sephora. 'We're not offering 200 different brands, as it's impossible for an employee to carry that information in their head and be able to give education and advice.'
Upstarts have created their own lines, like Life NK at Space NK, and M-61 Laboratories at Bluemercury. But Sephora offers the most with a popular private label, and is an exclusive retailer for brands developed by Kendo, an LVMH incubator of new beauty brands. Kendo has developed lines such as Marc Jacobs Beauty, Elizabeth and James Nirvana White and Nirvana Black fragrances, and Formula X, an advanced nail lacquer line.
'We were the first to have e-commerce in 1999, which we relaunched in 2012, one of the first to have a shopping app for beauty, and our Color IQ that launched last September,' said Julie Bornstein, chief marketing and digital officer at Sephora, referring to a foundation makeup-match device developed in partnership with Pantone. 'We offer walk-in services, reservations for custom services, personal beauty adviser consultations, and have launched classes in 55 stores.'
One might expect smaller beauty boutiques to fear Sephora the way independent bookstores did Barnes & Noble, but some view the chain as a blessing.
'Three months after I opened my first boutique in D.C., a Sephora opened three doors away,' Ms. Beck said. 'Everyone said, 'You'll go out of business.' They had written our obituary. They were wrong. It made us more creative. It focused us on high service and to curate the store with quality indie brands that had an impact like Nars, Fresh, Bliss and Bobbi Brown.'
If the buying process is creative, store location is a matter of data analysis, executives say: researching age and income information from census data, among other sources.
'We know if there's enough people to support a store,' Mr. Lelli of Ulta said. 'We have a strong loyalty program and royalty club and they become a focus group. We know how much they're spending, how often they're visiting, where they live in reference to where they shop, or if we need to put a store closer to where they live. There's an appetite to shop with us.'
An insatiable appetite, industry professionals say.
'It's the Starbucks phenomenon,' said Maria Corbiscello, a specialist in beauty and fragrance development, and president of Studio MC 2, a fragrance and product development beauty company. 'Yes, these stores are everywhere, but I'm not sure there's enough to service everyone's needs. Beauty is a main theme in everyone's life, and everyone is still looking for the magic in a bottle.'
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