St. Ives attempts to capture the millenial market with new pop-up experience

By

Emily Jensen

Published
Jun 17, 2017

The drugstore skincare brand is jumping into the experiential shopping market with a new pop-up shop in Soho. The temporary store will let customers create their own facial scrubs and lotions.

 
Located in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood, the St. Ives Mixing Bar will let visitors choose from more than 50 natural ingredients to create their own scrubs or lotions. The items St. Ives is best known for, such as its apricot facial scrub, will not be sold at the pop-up shop. The shop will instead attempt to introduce customers to more on-trend skincare ingredients, and will sell limited edition candles in scents like coconut cacao and blackberry basil.
 
According to St. Ives Marketing Director Suzanne Palentchar, the pop-up shop is something of a departure for the skincare brand, which has mostly been confined to drugstores. “The introduction of the St. Ives Mixing Bar is an exciting and completely new way for our fans to experience St. Ives,” she said in a statement.

Palentchar says the goal of the Soho pop-up is to draw a new generation of customers to the brand. She says the brand, which is owned by Unilver will closely track which ingredients are popular at the store, and respond accordingly.
 
The pop-up shop hasn’t done away completely with the brand’s association with apricots, as it will also include a mirrored infinity room featuring the fruit, with the hope that visitors will use the room to capture photos to be shared on social media.
 
Pop-up or experiential stores have proved exceedingly popular models for brands attempting to capture the millennial market, particularly in the beauty sector. Many have implemented elements that encourage customers to share their experience at the store on social media, such as the Soko Glam mini store at Bloomingdale’s, which asked customers to upload photos to social media in order to win prizes and rewards.
 
The Soho pop up shop is located at 577 Broadway and will remain open until July 30.