Online beauty company Birchbox has opened shop – Retail Week looks at how they have translated online personalisation to an in-store format.

Until recently, Birchbox was an online-only New York-based beauty company selling “grooming, beauty and lifestyle products” and had been in existence since 2010.

Now it has a terrestrial presence in the shape of a two-floor shop on West Broadway in lower Manhattan. The store takes the website’s fresh-faced and youthful ambience and translates it in the physical space through the use of birch wood on the floors and around the perimeter.

While this may seem an obvious thing to do, given the name, making it interesting and worthy of being shopped is something else.

In order to achieve this, Birchbox has introduced a number of features to the store, including stocking brands not by label, but by category, meaning that shoppers do not have to search through multiple branded offers when looking for, say, red lipstick. Instead, they can head straight for the lipstick section and make a choice.

For those with a more experimental view of beauty shopping, the store has a ‘BYOB’ section. This stands for ‘Build Your Own Birchbox’ and allows customers to handpick five products for a set price. This area of the shop is decorated with dressing-room mirrors and adds a dash of glamour.

There are also touchscreens throughout the store. Using these, Birchbox leverages its digital experience and aims to help shoppers find the right product, based on a few on-screen questions. And for those who still need to know more, there are group classes on beauty topics.

All of which means this is a store that has taken many of the features that might easily work on a digital platform and put them into a shop in a manner that is both engaging and likely to garner loyalty.