If you’ve ever placed an order with Adore Beauty, you know the sweet excitement of opening your package and finding a Tim Tam hidden among the serums and haircare products. The company launched in 2000 with just two brands and today carries 400.
This Saturday, the beauty powerhouse will finally open its first physical store, at Southland Shopping Centre in Cheltenham, on the same floor as Mecca and Sephora. And the Tim Tams are coming as well. Customers will get one with every in-store purchase – always.
“Over Covid we saw a big shift to digital environments and then following that, people were really happy to get back into shopping in more of a physical environment,” Adore Beauty’s head of brand marketing, Anna Beaton, tells Broadsheet. “It was much more logical for us then to consider having a physical presence in the market.”
The obvious choice for a retailer like Adore would be shopping centres like Chadstone or Emporium, but Beaton says the store’s first location is driven by stacks of data around current and future consumer demand. Not only does the Southland site make a case for the rise of retail in suburbia, but it also allows the store to service and expand a customer base along the Mornington Peninsula. It’s the first of a planned 25 stores across Australia, with a second coming to Watergardens Shopping Centre in Taylors Lakes within months.
The new space translates more than two decades of e-commerce smarts into a physical shopfront that echoes the seamless online experience. Through a curved glass entrance, find a light-filled space featuring terrazzo flooring and beige and grey stone accents. It’s minimal and mostly paperless, with screens displaying product descriptions and prices on every shelf. At the centre, a tall, very on-trend limoncello-yellow table will be used for masterclasses and will hopefully host live recordings of the brand’s podcast, Beauty IQ.
While there are more than 14,000 products available online, in-store you can shop a smaller, curated selection from 50 brands. But if you’re after something that’s out of stock or only available online, the store’s touchscreens let you buy products digitally, pay for them in-store and have them delivered to your home, combining the best of both worlds.
Products will be curated specially for each store’s demographic with a high-low approach. There’ll be a mix of brands you’d typically find at a Chemist Warehouse, like Cera Ve and La Roche Posay, plus more high-end offerings like Ikkari, Estee Lauder and Alpha-H. The intention is that customers can move between accessible and premium price points without heading to a pharmacy or supermarket to pick up extra bits. It’s also the first time people can try Adore’s in-house brand AB Lab, in person.
There’s also a complimentary skin analysis service to give customers a deeper understanding of their skin and personalise product recommendations. The Observ 520x system, used by dermatologists and aestheticians, helps diagnose skin health at both the epidermal and dermal layers. It makes sense given Adore’s focus on stocking cosmeceutical brands including Asap, Skinceuticals, Medik8 and Vivology.
And even these quasi-scientific purchases come with a Tim Tam. “The reality is, women absolutely love Tim Tams, and they love beauty,” Beaton says. “The two together makes absolute logical sense to us.”
Adore Beauty opens on Saturday February 1. The first 250 in-store customers will receive a free goodie bag filled with more than 20 samples.
Adore Beauty
Shop 2020, Level 2/1239 Nepean Highway, Cheltenham
Hours
Mon to Wed 9am–5.30pm
Thur to Fri 9am–9pm
Sat 9am–5pm
Sun 10am–5pm
