Dive Brief:
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Online beauty retailer Birchbox is landing offline through a partnership with Gap stores.
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Birchbox pop-ups will be featured in Gap stores in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston through July.
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The move expands on an earlier, more limited partnership between Birchbox and Gap. Meanwhile, Nasty Gal is similarly hosting beauty brand Glossier pop-ups at its lone Los Angeles store, which Glossier says is something of a test for a venture into brick-and-mortar.
Dive Insight:
Gap could use the influx of shoppers that the presence of popular beauty brand Birchbox will bring. For Birchbox, this is a way to further test how and whether it should operate brick-and-mortar retail, something the company has said it wants to do. Similar to in Birchbox’s flagship New York store, customers can test products, assemble beauty boxes, and sign up for the brand’s subscription service.
These moves — Birchbox at Gap and Glossier at Nasty Gal — also show the strength and appeal of beauty right now. That bodes well for Macy's acquisition of Bluemercury, too, which the department store is leveraging for its "platinum" stores.
