From Sensorial Pop-Ups to Selling Eggs: Beauty Experiences Are Having, And Creating, “A Moment”

Mecca is preparing to open the biggest beauty store in the world, Priceline is launching a series of beauty retailers called Atomica, Adore Beauty is continuing its roll-out of physical stores, and pop-ups proliferate. Branding experts say in-store experiences are “the last true differentiator” to cut through in a cluttered -- and lucrative -- beauty category.

Beauty products are sensorial, designed for people to touch and swatch, sniff and spritz. Texture, fragrance, finish, and colour all matter, and are tied to personal preference and self-expression. While online-only players like the UK-based Cult Beauty are seeing success, getting people in-store means emotionally connecting with them, and building loyalty.

“As people push back against endless scrolling and algorithms, we’re seeing a resurgence of sorts,” Amanda Szylo-Duncan, the managing director and head of strategy at branding consultancy Interbrand, says.

“Shoppers want real-world, sensory, and social experiences an online cart just can’t deliver … Retailers like Sephora, Mecca, and even Woolworths are creating ‘TikTok Made Me Buy It’ sections that turn viral social moments into real-world retail experiences.

“Beauty retail isn’t just about buying products anymore, it’s about participating in culture.”

Or as Anna Bollinger, executive planning director at ad agency BMF, puts it, “The beauty industry isn’t just obsessed with immersive, in-store beauty experiences, it needs them to stay relevant.

“In a world where every brand has a dupe, experience is the last true differentiator. It’s about transforming beauty from a product into a feeling, a memory, and a long-lasting moment worth sharing.”

Australian e-commerce player Adore Beauty entered the bricks-and-mortar world at the start of the year, unveiling a plan for 25 stores, each of which will stock different products based on online purchasing data for that location. Wesfarmers has also debuted its plan to take on the likes of category-leaders Mecca and Sephora: A premium Priceline brand, Atomica.

The first Atomica store quietly opened in Sydney’s Castle Hill in December, and will be followed by a further four stores by the end of the financial year. The ambition? To bridge the gap between the beauty experiences offered in supermarkets and chemists, and the mid-tier to luxury space dominated by Mecca and Sephora.

Amanda observes Priceline’s association with the health and pharmaceutical categories would make it difficult for a ‘Priceline Beauty’ brand to achieve the same cut-through as Atomica might.

“This new brand can focus exclusively on beauty, from its name to its identity and in-store experience. It allows them to focus on a tighter audience, and to build the brand around meeting the specific needs of that target. It’s expressive and playful, and because it is a standalone brand, it can show up tonally the way it needs to.”

Victoria Berry, FutureBrand’s head of strategy, wonders whether the creation of a new brand is “potentially paving the way for a future sale of Atomica.” It’s a “really clever portfolio play,” she argues, because it targets a “consumer who's looking for a more curated and expanded range of beauty brands. It could be the same consumer that's walking into Priceline as well. They just might be in a different stage of the day, or a different moment, or [have] a different preference.”

While the products stocked in Atomica might be cheaper, on average, than Mecca’s range, shoppers don’t want to engage in beauty purchases based on price, says Sarah Udovenya, a Futurebrand strategist who previously spent almost five years in marketing roles at Mecca. That’s why an in-store experience is so important.

“Because beauty is such a discretionary spend category, customers don't want to feel like they're making decisions based on something that they can afford. It really is around that feel-good moment. They're wanting to engage with brands and retailers that make them feel good when they walk in, [and] make them feel even better when they walk out.”

“Add Value, Add Intrigue, Add Joy”: Pop-Up Pampering

Lucy Hay is the co-founder and chief marketing officer at CLUTCH, a clothing glue product disrupting the fashion tape industry and valued at $10 million. Lucy, who was previously a copywriter for agencies like Leo Burnett and DDB, says ‘The Lipstick Effect’ -- which suggests people continue to splurge on small, ‘affordable’ luxuries to cope with cost of living pressures -- is “very much” alive and well. Anna agrees “revenge spending is still going strong.”

The beauty industry was worth AUD$16 billion in 2024, and that figure is set to soar even further to AUD$30.41 billion by 2034. While cost of living pressures may have forced people to give up aspirations of home ownership or “cut back on big nights out,” Anna notes, “we still want to look and feel good every day, which keeps beauty purchases high.”

That “little treat” mentality feels even easier to access in-store; CLUTCH is stocked in Pricelines across Australia, 3,000 CVS stores in the US, and is set to launch in more retailers in the near future.

When the brand first landed on Priceline shelves, about 80% of sales were online, and 20% in-store. That split is now almost 50/50, Lucy reveals.

“Retail provides credibility to the product. It feels like a new brand pops up every day, but not just any old product can make it to shelves,” she says.

“Then you've got the added layer of a premium experience at places like Atomica and Mecca. So, retail does wonders for converting purchases from customers who haven't quite been convinced by what they've seen online.”

Mecca founder Jo Horgan is set to launch the beauty behemoth’s biggest store yet in May. The Melbourne space will be the size of a department store, spanning 4,000-square-metres and three floors, and boasting a tech-led experience helping customers find their perfect fragrance, a new wellness division called Mecca Apothecary, and a 400-square-metre space to host masterclasses and events.

“Have we stayed on budget? No … It’s not ideal but it increases the need to make it the most extraordinary beauty experience for customers. It’s unlikely to be replicated by anyone in the world, ever,” she told the ‘Australian Financial Review’.

The business has always focused on customer experience -- from in-store hosts (the founder drew inspiration from hospitality), to the Beauty Loop program boasting 2.9 million members, the festival-like ‘Meccaland’ in 2018 and 2019, and pop-ups at sporting events like the Australian Open and Melbourne’s Grand Prix.

Mecca understands the beauty category can and should overlap with entertainment, fashion, and sport to unlock customers’ passions and purchasing power. In 2024, Jo Horgan and her husband were valued at $812 million on the AFR’s Rich List.

The Mecca Max pop-up at the Australian Grand Prix spotlighted the in-house brand’s affordable range, offering quick touch-ups across the race weekend. Go-To, Zoe Foster-Blake’s skincare juggernaut which is also stocked in Mecca, recently launched ‘The Powder Room’, a peach-hued “oasis away from home,” as per the brand, offering skin consultations, limited edition merch, and gifts.

Fellow Aussie skincare brand kit (and Mecca shelf neighbour) set up the experiential ‘Sleep Workshop’ in a Melbourne mall. And yet another Mecca-stocked brand, Summer Fridays, handed out ice cream and samples in Bondi at its ‘Summer Beach Club’ pop-up.

“Pop-ups are a great way for brands to get out there in the real world, creating authentic owned content but crucially, setting the stage for fans to create their own content too,” says Anna.

Globally, the Hailey Bieber-owned Rhode has had hundreds of fans queuing for hours to get into its pop-ups, while competitor Glossier just launched its new fragrance with an activation starring an oversized bottle – introducing fans to the scent and creating a PR moment in the process.

“It really is about meeting the customer where they expect to be met. And what we can say about beauty consumers at the moment is they certainly expect to be surprised,” says Sarah.

“They're not just mirroring or duplicating [another physical or online experience] in a different medium. It’s around enhancing a brand story, extending a brand story, so it really feels like a continuous, holistic view of a brand.”

Amanda says the ease of online purchases, driven by influencers’ affiliate links and TikTok Shop, means in-store experiences “can’t only be transactional.” Activations like Go-To’s ‘Powder Room’ work because they are “experiences you can’t get from the couch that only that brand can create.”

“We’ve got no shortage of beauty retailers. We don’t need just another beauty experience,” she says.

“That’s what we’re seeing with Go-To [and] Mecca at the F1. They go beyond seeing IRL as a means to sell -- but rather a way to add value, add intrigue, add joy, and fuel discovery -- for that precious moment their audience is with them. And what is beauty, if not fun and joyful?”

Understand Culture, Or “Break the Brand, Break the Bank, Break the Trust”

Beauty brands aren’t relying solely on Instagrammable activations to drive customers in-store. Just weeks ago, no-frills skincare brand The Ordinary made headlines for selling -- and selling out of -- eggs in New York, where a bird flu outbreak made the basic item very expensive and hard to find. How do brands know where and how to play at the edges of, and beyond, their category?

“With the rise of ‘skinvestment,’ where skincare is seen more as wellness than just cosmetics, it’s easier to dip into things like nutritional wellness, and eggs, which tie into the idea of natural ingredients,” explains BMF’s Anna.

“It’s not only topical, but smart brand disruption in my opinion. Knowing when to push the boundaries comes down to understanding your brand and audience intimately.”

Strong brands can take calculated risks like selling eggs, Amanda adds, because they “know what’s happening in their audience’s world and in culture”, and ask “What’s next, and what makes real sense for us to own and move on?’ If you’re at the whim of every trend, you’ll start to break the brand, break the bank, and start to break the trust you’ve built with your audience.”

The key is differentiating customer experience (CX) and brand experience (BX), according to Victoria. Consumers want connected experiences, but a trend towards ‘seamlessness’, aided by technology, strips an experience of emotion. BX adds “meaningful friction” which makes a brand, and a purchase, memorable. Lining up for hours for the chance to experience a temporary activation isn’t frictionless, but it proves beauty consumers want to feel connected to the brands they’re buying from.

“Brands are being managed really effectively,” Victoria says, “but perhaps have not done as good a job as they could have in terms of that emotional connection and the role personality plays.”

After all, BMF’s Anna quips, “In ‘The White Lotus’ season one, Tanya [played by Jennifer Coolidge] tells her future husband, ‘I've had every kind of treatment over the years. Death is the last immersive experience I haven't tried.’ Beauty is kind of like that -- do or die, all about the senses.”