TRY A SAMPLE: Birchbox Plans An Outpost In SoHo

In a move that raises the question of how big a web-only store can get without a traditional store, Birchbox, the online beauty and grooming sample service, is planning a permanent, freestanding retail home of its own on West Broadway in SoHo. The company has made an impressive, if unexpected, success of sending subscribers a box of ordinarily free sample products specially chosen to fit their personal profiles every month for a recurring $10 fee, serving as an example of how to create a strictly web driven company. Their subscriber base has doubled to 800,000 men and women, twice what it was last year. The drawback? Though many customers returned to Birchbox to order full-sized replacements of products they liked, other simply went to the drugstore or makeup counter, which was fine with the product suppliers, but limited the site's full sales potential. After testing the waters with a series of pop-up shops in New York City, the permanent Birchox store will offer 2,500 products in stock as well as a B.Y.O.B. (build your own Birchbox) section that will allow customers to choose their own products to fill a box for $15 each. There will be touchscreens with product information as well as abundant product testing, beauty classes and advice available for visitors. Whether or not this will lead to more stores for the company depends on how this first one evolves, but Birchbox now joins Warby Parker, Piperlime and Bonobos as web retailers who have found traditional stores to be too valuable of a sales channel to be ignored. 

Birchbox, Seller of Beauty Products, Steps Out From Web With a Store (NYTimes)