EXCLUSIVE: Glossier Opens Las Vegas Store That Sells Lip Balm Alongside Bedazzled Baby Ts
Glossier is refocusing on its own stores — and is entering a new market with its latest opening.
The brand, which hit sales highs after its 2023 debut at Sephora, is also doubling down on its brick-and-mortar stores. That is culminating in the opening of Glossier’s store in The Forum Shops in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Glossier’s 13th store to date, opening Thursday.
And though the Sephora volume is impressive — last year, sales were said to reach around $275 million — Glossier’s own channel remains a top strategic priority.
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“There is no better expression of the brand than a retail store, and that’s always been true,” said Chitra Balireddi, Glossier’s chief commercial officer. “In wholesale, we express the brand to some degree. But the full manifestation happens in our stores, and not just from a design and aesthetic standpoint, but in terms of how our [staff] speaks about the brand, as well as a merchandise offer.”
Glossier’s body care assortment, for example, as well as its branded merchandise, are only sold in the brand’s owned channels and not in Sephora. “We don’t need to open 200 stores to get the distribution we can get with wholesale,” Balireddi said. “We can do that meaningfully with wholesale. That brings people in. To immerse them into the brand, we have the freestanding stores. Those are very important in our go-to-market strategy.”
Though the brand is known for its Millennial pink and Instagrammable stores, Adriana Deleo, vice president and deputy creative director of design at Glossier, said that the Las Vegas store is a bit more tailored to that market.
“We take our brand DNA, we push it and pull it and try to find a version that’s uniquely Glossier,” she said. “We were looking at casinos, slot machines and ornate hotel carpeting. This is a retro, futuristic version of Glossier that felt right for Vegas.”
Deleo also introduced a new color to the brand, a minty shade of green. “It has this sci-fi sort of hint,” Deleo said. “But the softness of the shade works for us. Pink has always been our color, and we’ve shown up with so many variations. We’d like to experiment and figure out ways we can evolve in ways right for the brand.”
The design philosophy, though, is to make sure that no two stores are the same. “The intention is to bring customers in because they’re going to explore the brand and understand it in a whole new way,” Balireddi said. “It’s a completely different merchandising strategy for this store, and we have merchandise that is specifically unique to this store.”
Among those products are rhinestone-bedazzled baby T-shirts, among others. “You’ll find a broader assortment of our existing merch too, but we’re having a lot of fun with it,” Balireddi said.
Glossier partners with local charities for each store, and in Las Vegas, it’s joined forces with the Wild West Access Fund, which “provides funding for reproductive care,” Balireddi said. “It feels very meaningful, but on the flip side, we had a lot of fun building out these items.”
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