Skincare brand Aesop breaks the rules when it comes to standalone stores, but it is a success story. John Ryan reports.

Skincare brands seem almost as plentiful as perfumes and a quick stroll around any self-respecting department store’s beauty hall will suffice to show that as with fragrance, this category is about marketing dreams.

Perhaps for this reason the number of standalone skincare retailers is very limited indeed – the packaging that tends to go hand-in-hand with products of this kind has a tendency to swallow up budget. When it comes to store design, in the interests of economy, the usual order of the day is therefore to create a branded shop-in-shop, roll it out and then wait for the return on investment to become a reality.

Doing things differently

It is surprising therefore that one of the more obvious success stories, particularly in an economic climate where fripperies tend to be under pressure, is a skincare retailer and brand called Aesop that does not do any of this. The brand in fact celebrated its 25th anniversary last Sunday and since its modest beginnings in Melbourne, it has expanded beyond its home market and is now very firmly on the international expansion track.

It has done so in a manner that is unusual for a cross-border operation – every one of its stores is different. Practically, this means that the five stores that trade in the UK, all in London, may look and feel on-brand, but they are quite different from each other.

The latest, the two most recent openings, in Borough Market and Soho, both launched in December and are about “respecting the communities of which they are a part”, according to a spokeswoman.

Thomas Buisson, Aesop’s Paris-based general manager Europe, says that when the brand’s founder Dennis Paphitis began opening shops he wanted each store to be discrete in terms of looks and feel: “When he travels, he really hates to see the same streets Xeroxed in different parts of the world. This was the underlying principle when he opened shops and each branch is an architectural statement.”

The reason that this is the case is straightforward and again, at odds with normal beauty products retailing. Aesop does not advertise, it does not enlist celebrities to promote the brand and does not conduct events – “so the architecture of the store is one of our stronger communication points”, as Buisson puts it.

More than skin deep

The other point about an Aesop store is that while it may be strong on a particular, spare-looking aesthetic, this is not about glossy glamour.

Instead the stores are prime examples of reach-me-down chic – the beaten-up store design ethos that has found favour among many luxury clothing brands, but which, with the exception of this brand, is not given floor space in the skincare sector.

The small store near London Bridge shows the Aesop modus operandi at work. This is a single-floor unit with a low-key wooden frontage that has been painted moss green with the store name picked out in white.

Within, things are quite severe and the whole of the mid-shop is empty, save for a pile of thick rope that serves as a quasi-sculpture in the right-hand corner towards the front of the shop. The floor is formed from untreated and stripped wooden boards, knots and all, while overhead, pendant lights with green metal shades that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 1940s, serve to lighten the interior.

All of which is to make this sound as if not much money has been spent on the interior. And in truth, it has not. Buisson says that Aesop’s interiors are the outcome of efforts by a variety of architectural firms and, from time to time, by the in-house team, but that it is ideas rather than cash that count. The London Bridge store clearly follows this diktat and is about a mix of “repetition and chaos”, according to Buisson.

The repetition part of the formula comes from the packaging and its in-store merchandising. Aesop’s unique schtick is the brown bottle. When Paphitis was looking at ways of packaging the product, he hit upon the idea of using brown glass bottles because they were readily available in Australia as this tends to be the glass colour of choice for many Aussie brewers. He designed the labels, which have an anti-style appeal about them, on a PC and the brand identity was born.

Today, this translates as displays of brown bottles, in a large variety of sizes, but all looking more or less the same, that are organised in open-fronted plain wood boxes set against the walls. Again, these are of different shapes and sizes, but the overall impression is of repetition. The effect is almost clinical, but not in a white-coated way. In Aesop, the ambience has more in common with an old- fashioned apothecary.

There are, of course, other elements that are used to enhance the interior of this store, with a vintage dentist’s light, a row of rusting white enamelled basins and a posse of blue heads in a group on the floor, all creating additional interest. But this is a spartan interior and one that will appeal to the design-aware middle class bohemian set that spend their weekends wandering around this part of London deciding whether to buy a Lollo Rosso lettuce or a Savoy cabbage.

This is a store that has been designed to appeal to more than passing tourists however. Borough Market trades predominantly on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and the store aims to capture trade at those times – but to do so in a way that will appeal to those who live and work in the area as much as weekend foodies.

Retail theatre

The Soho store is bigger and, well, cleaner – but it is a much slicker experience, perhaps in keeping with its location on the fringes of London’s adland. “People who shop in Notting Hill regard Shoreditch, for instance, as almost another country, so we have to work with this. London is still such a big city with so many villages that really don’t talk to each other that each store needs to be an individual,” says Buisson.

He adds that another store is on the drawing board, this time in Islington, for later this year and Germany is the latest market that Aesop is eyeing. When that happens, Aesop will be up and running in the UK, Switzerland, France and Germany – adding to the extensive network of stores it has in Australia, and southeast Asia – alongside a US presence.

This then is a skincare brand that breaks more or less every piece of received wisdom about how to sell products of this kind through stores.

It is not about glamour, in-store or in the packaging that is used, it is not about high-profile campaigns and, to an extent, it is about blending in with a locality, rather than standing out.

Yet it works and works well and while the rule of thumb in the industry seems to be that 80% of the cost of a product should be involved in its marketing and 20% on what is contained in the packaging, Aesop more or less turns this on its head. As an exercise in doing things differently and being successful, this is textbook study.

Aesop, London Bridge

Location 5 Park Street, London SE1

London stores Mayfair, Notting Hill, London Bridge, Soho, Shoreditch

Major shop-in-shop Liberty

Ambience Utilitarian and repetitive

Brand founder Dennis Paphitis