Setting up shop: Inside Adore Beauty’s ‘phygital’ store design

In February, Adore Beauty opened its first bricks-and-mortar store at Westfield Southland, Melbourne.Fast-forward to August, the now omnichannel retailer has five stores across Australia with plans to reach 25 stores in 2027.Adore Beauty is looking to show up for its over 1 million customers. Its heritage as a pureplay retailer has given it a wealth of data on where its customers are and which growth areas it wants to tap into with physical stores.“Right now, the majority of beauty sales in Australia are happening in stores, in physical environments,” Jacq Vuleta, Adore Beauty’s chief customer and merchandise officer, told Inside Retail. “As our brand mix continues to grow, particularly across sensory categories like fragrance and makeup, bricks-and-mortar stores enable our customers to experience the products and discover new ones,” she continued.And the omnichannel strategy is already proving successful. Adore Beauty has stated that nearly 80 per cent of its known customers are purchasing brands in-store that they’ve never purchased through the company before. Creating consistency offline Adore Beauty worked on integration from the ground up to ensure that there is little separation between offline and online shopping experiences for customers. “Our stores have been a great exercise in bringing our brand to life, giving our customers an opportunity to get a sense of how we look and how we feel in a very tangible way,” Vuleta explained.“From a design perspective, we have created a calm environment for customers to browse brands in an agnostic way. The goal here is always to help them find the best solution for their unique needs and wants.”In-store customers can choose not only to interact with the brands carried within the store, but also to browse more than 14,000 products independently via Adore Beauty’s digital in-store kiosks. The kiosks let customers browse product reviews from the community and check out on the spot. Maintaining a people culture Adore Beauty’s provision of access to brand-agnostic, peer-to-peer recommendations extends to its approach to customer service. “Our customer service teams, both online and offline, reflect that same ethos of honest and straightforward beauty advice so you can find the best products for you,” Vuleta shared. Core to Adore Beauty’s brand ethos is providing trustworthy, authentic education to help support the customer in whatever way they need, which means both in-store and online customer service staff have to undertake training. “To maintain our distinct approach as well as beauty expertise, all team members participate in rigorous Adore onboarding as well as brand training,” Vuleta stated. “Our team are beauty experts who are brand agnostic, so whether it’s colour matching for the right foundation or finding the most effective Vitamin C Serum to suit your budget, they are equipped to support.”Unpacking the tech stack When provisioning all its technology in stores – from point of sale to digital pricing and endless aisle – Adore Beauty ensured its POS system connected to the same central source of truth as its website.“Integrating this way means we have the flexibility to offer customers the exact same promotions across both our online and in-store channels, or to tailor unique offers for each,” Vuleta said. “Whether customers are browsing from their couch or stepping into one of our stores, they’re getting a consistent, transparent and responsive shopping experience.” Adore Beauty also adopted a digital customer-focused solution for pricing to avoid the traditional hunt for tiny price stickers. “Our approach was to design and implement product pricing delivered through digital tablets that sit next to the shelves of products, displaying a list of the most up-to-date pricing offered onsite, connected to the same engines that control our website,” Vuleta explained. But it’s Adore Beauty’s endless aisle experience, powered by Tutch, that shows its power being born in the digital realm. Customers are able to peruse its entire online beauty catalogue to explore product information, ingredients and reviews, as well as place an online order in-store. “With all our in-store digital solutions, the integration into our existing tech stack ensures that we’ve given customers the true choice in shopping how they prefer, without limiting their experience either way,” Vuleta stated. The power of retail media Adore Beauty is taking an integrated approach to promoting launches and campaigns that reflect its newomnichannel strategy. “Our origins are in digital and we’ve leaned into that with digital screens in our store windows that can be used for everything from national sales campaigns to LAM, allowing us to be agile and hyper-specific for each location,” Vuleta said.“It was important to us in designing the concept for our stores that customers could still engage with product reviews, which is where our interactive digital kiosks play a big role,” she added. It is also making the most of its ever-expanding omnichannel presence and ability to reach its large customer base by tapping into retail media. Adore Beauty has not only identified retail media as a key opportunity for its own growth and margin expansion but also to do the same for its suppliers. “Our ever-expanding omnichannel presence means greater potential for brands to reach our 1 million-plus customers, and retail media supercharges that potential,” Vuleta elaborated. “We take a digital approach to our visual merchandising: Pricing is digital and we eschew traditional printed POS for interactive digital touchpoints.” Adore Beauty is also continuing to leverage its authority in the beauty industry, built over time through its ‘Beauty IQ’ content to curate and promote certain Beauty IQ-approved products. In keeping with tradition Maybe the most important tradition Adore Beauty carried over from its online store to its physical stores is its free Tim Tam with every in-store purchase. When asked why it was important for Adore Beauty to carry over its Tim Tam gift with purchase from its online store to its physical stores, Vuleta answered, “How could we not?” “Our customers love their Tim Tams. It was only natural to introduce them to the offline experience, too. Who doesn’t love a sweet treat with their beauty buys?” she concluded.This story first appeared in the August 2025 issue of Inside Retail Australia magazine.