Unilever reprises St. Ives skin care pop-up in New York City

19-Jun-2018 - Last updated on 19-Jun-2018 at 18:51 GMT

On Friday the skin care brand opened a pop-up shop on 5th Avenue in Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood. It’s the second summer that Unilever is leveraging this limited-time, experiential, personalized retail strategy to engage beauty consumers.

Last summer St. Ives opened its first pop-up skin care mixing bar farther downtown in SoHo. The mixing-bar format, used for both last year’s and this year’s shops, is one the brand borrowed from popular juice bars and plays heavily on natural, edible ingredients.

This year’s mix-in ingredients include “rose water, yuzu, kiwi, pink grapefruit, and more,” according to Unilever’s press release about the newly opened pop-up.

In 2017 the shop was open for 6 weeks. For 2018 the brand is stretching the definition of pop-up and keeping its custom product mixing bar open for 3 full months—from June 15 through September 15.

More is more

The 2017 shop offered a fairly limited product selection—face scrubs and body lotions. At this year’s edition of the St. Ives mixing bar, the brand has added in facial moisturizer. And the retail items go well beyond last year’s selection of candles. “For the first-time ever, exclusive retail products including bath bombs, lip scrubs, hand creams, and an Iconic Apricot rollerball fragrance will be available for purchase,” according to the press release.

“We are excited to bring the St. Ives Mixing Bar back to New York this year, offering our consumers the chance to once again create their own skin care products using our favorite natural ingredients,” Suzanne Palentchar, director of marketing for St. Ives tells the press.

“We are bringing back some of last summer's top sellers,” explains Palentchar, “and have expanded the menu with some new surprises as well.”

Digital pop-up

This year’s NYC shop won’t be the only place St. Ives customers can get the personalized products. “As a brand, we are always looking for new ways to engage with our consumers,” acknowledges Palentchar.

“In response to their feedback from last summer,” she says, “we are excited to open an online direct-to-consumer extension of the store to bring the same custom experience of the store to fans nationwide.” The online experience runs longer than the NYC pop-up, staying open through the end of the year.

Shoppers in-store or online, choose a product and customize it to their liking with the help of a brand counter person. “The second installment of the St. Ives Mixing Bar features hundreds of unique ingredient combinations, desired lotion richness and facial scrub exfoliation levels,” according to the press release.

“New this year, visitors can create custom face moisturizers made with on-trend ingredients….For those looking to give their body lotion a fun boost, a new mineral shimmer can be added to any combination of ingredients.”

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Deanna Utroske, CosmeticsDesign.com Editor, covers beauty business news in the Americas region and publishes the weekly Indie Beauty Profile column, showcasing the inspiring work of entrepreneurs and innovative brands.