A long queue stretches outside the shopping center in Los Angeles. Crowds of people are missing work and skipping school to be the first to witness their favorite celebrity’s brand in real life.
External Experiences and the Power of Online Brands
One of the many benefits of running a business online is the ability to operate at low costs and the freedom to work anytime and anywhere. Many merchants operate solely as e-commerce stores without expanding to a physical location or meeting customers face-to-face or needing to change their clothes. It is possible to exist solely online and grow to become a massive business. In fact, the largest celebrity brand online has done just that.
Kylie Jenner’s External Experiences
Until the end of last year, Kylie Jenner’s cosmetics line launched and exploded on just one channel: her Shopify store. She did not sell her products wholesale or offer them in a physical location. To get a Kylie Cosmetics lipstick collection, you had to buy it directly from the source. The Kylie Cosmetics online store is powered by Shopify.
But even Kylie, whose brand has grown larger than other celebrity brands, recognized the value of real-time experiences. In November, her team contacted the Shopify team, and the idea became a reality: Shopify would help Kylie bring her online-only brand into a three-dimensional reality. It would be a manifestation of her brand – ultimately a manifestation of Kylie herself – teaching her a lot about her audience.
The Power of Experiences
I admit that I was skeptical before I met the team that built the pop-up store, and I doubted that I could glean anything relevant for most of our merchants. “How could the success story of a famous star relate to ordinary small business experiences?” I thought. But I was wrong.
The one theme that emerged in my conversations was that regardless of the size of the business or budget, simple experiences that require a human touch have incredible value for online brands.
How to Achieve External Experiences
When time was running out, the Shopify team used simple tricks to get the job done in time for the opening day. In the end, the space was clean – not extravagant – a model that even new brands could access. I interviewed the team on the ground about their experiences bringing a huge online brand to life and their tips for other brands wanting to do the same.
A special thanks to Jin Lee, Aarti Sharma, and Catherine Cheung for the additional insights.
Building External Experiences: What We Learned from Kylie’s Pop-up Shop
There’s nothing quite like the sensory experience of interacting with products directly in the real world. From a product perspective, the benefits of external experiences for brands are clear. But bringing your brand into the real world has lasting benefits even after the store closes. “It’s more about selling your brand rather than the product,” says Michael. “Your website does that already.” Even if the goal isn’t sales, or if sales are lower than expected, the experience can teach you a lot about your product and your customers. Who are the people coming to the place? How do they respond to your products? “Find out who your customer is in real life. The people who lined up at Kylie’s store were incredibly interesting – the demographics I saw were astounding. You think you know who your customer is, but you really don’t.” – Natasha
Your goal
to ensure that your customers feel valued and engaged throughout their entire experience. Create an atmosphere where they can connect with your brand on a personal level, and they’ll be more likely to share their positive experiences with others.
to investing in people. Cody DiParker
For younger brands, the same strategy can be applied on a smaller scale when hiring for a temporary store or event. Anyone can be trained to register customers on a Point of Sale (POS) system, so look within your networks to find people who already embody and love your brand – friends, family, and even loyal customers of your brand.
“Your customers know your brand as well as you do. If that means family and friends, if that means people who are already buying, invest your time and energy in them because they are the ones who will give your customers the best experience.” – Cody
Find people you trust. Don’t just think, “Oh, they will only take the money.” These are the people who will reflect your brand. – Rahul Kulkarni
Building a Genuine Brand Experience
A good understanding of your brand will help guide how people feel when they enter the physical space. Ask yourself: What do I want people to feel when they walk in? What type of people am I trying to attract? How will my brand translate into things people can touch, hear, smell, feel, or taste?
For Kylie, she and her brand are one and the same. Naturally, the actual embodiment of that brand was a representation of her own bedroom – a way for customers to connect with Kylie intimately. “If you could imagine entering your website, what would it look like? You are creating a physical representation of your website. You have already made those decisions about colors, imagery, feeling, and everything. Now bring it to real life.” – Michael
Products
When our team began marketing Kylie’s products, they realized that the lipstick sets were not designed for sale in a retail environment.
“The challenge was that the product was designed for online sales only. One lipstick looks identical, except for the very small line on the front of the box that indicates glossy or matte. It’s good that we noticed that because someone was putting some gloss with the one matte lipstick. They look completely identical. I couldn’t even tell them apart.” – Matt
When developing products for online sale, consider whether you might at some point venture into the physical world or want to run a temporary store at any time. Can your packaging be adapted by labels or tags to make it easily marketable? Would you need to develop additional packaging to convey information that is usually on your product page? What other products can you create exclusively for the retail experience?
Thinking about these questions during the development phase can save you headaches later.
“What is visually good for the internet is easy because you take a picture. But they weren’t thinking about how this product would look when marketed together. That’s huge, especially in cosmetics. The way Sephora and MAC design their packaging think a lot about those things.” – Natasha
To overcome the labeling challenges for Kylie Cosmetics products, the team used marketing experiments and staff training to help alleviate frustration in the purchasing experience.
The Budget
Although our team worked with much larger budgets than the average Shopify merchants, they insist that any merchant can create a great in-person experience at a very low cost. Fortunately, minimalism is a current trend, even among large brands like Pablo by Kanye.
“The matter
It’s about how to get things. It’s about how to present your brand within that space. It’s not about the money and how crazy it gets. You look at a lot of stores these days and they are going minimal. They are going with beautiful wood, white walls, movable shelves, and tables. It’s nothing.” – Michael
So, where do you put your money?
“Honestly: Present your product well. Whether that’s new packaging or small price tags or maybe bags to give people. Remember, this experience doesn’t end when you leave your pop-up shop. It’s when you get home too. You’ve got the bag. The unboxing experience. That’s important. Do all of that.” – Michael
Remember, this experience doesn’t end when you leave your pop-up shop. Michael Brewer
Invest in versatile display items, Natasha says:
“Order plenty of plexiglass because it can be used in different ways. We had to find a quick solution for iPad stands. You have to be clever in those moments. Matt had this idea to apply the iPad to the clear plexiglass, and it ended up looking sleek and attractive. And it cost nothing. Nothing! Probably around $50 in the end.” – Natasha
Think about the timeline and the possibilities. Your display should be beautiful, but if it can’t withstand customer handling or if it’s difficult for the customer to shop, then you’ve failed. At Kylie’s pop-up shop, the team balanced the lip gloss walls to ensure clarity between the gloss and the matte. Create a restocking strategy. How will you keep the displays filled? What happens when you run out of something? Will you keep some sizes/styles in the back with just a few samples in the store? Organize the storage area in the space in an orderly and accessible manner for quick restocking.
Checkout in the Real World
Checkout is the last thing many retailers think about when setting up a pop-up shop, according to Rahul, and it was the same for a major brand like Kylie.
“For most retailers trying to build a pop-up shop or retail space, a point-of-sale (POS) system is really an afterthought.” – Rahul
Kylie’s store was powered by Shopify POS, and the team carefully considered how customers would interact with the checkout process, minimizing it as much as possible to focus on the brand.
“When customers enter the store, a wristband is placed on their wrist and their personal information is entered there. When they reach the checkout point, we ask for their name, and then we send them an automated receipt. It made for a better, more personalized experience for the customers.” – Rahul
Also consider how to handle customer service issues like returns and exchanges. You may have an app or process to help manage these cases for your online store, but it can be cumbersome in person, especially in a temporary retail setting.
“With Kylie, we decided on a final sale policy because the reality is that when you run a pop-up shop, you want to enhance the fantastic buying experience. You don’t have the ability to provide the best customer service.” – Rahul
The Power of Experiences
Customers expect you to provide a personal experience that exceeds online shopping. Kylie’s pop-up shop not only encouraged customers and fans to interact with the space and share it socially, but it was also the exclusive destination for completely sold-out colors and new products offered specifically for the holidays.
Some experiential ideas:
- Selfie stations and photography kiosks
- Drink or snack stations with cocktails or signature flavors – partnering with a local craft distillery or startup catering company
- Experiences
- Interactive experience or actual experience
- Appeal to the senses through scent or sound marketing
- Workshops or classes in your space (using your product)
- Exclusive products and deals
- VR experiences
- Live music
Experimental – Product testing, makeup experts, personal fashion designers, fitting rooms
Remember, you are your brand, and you should be a big part of that experience. Use real-time with customers to tell your story. Even Kylie seized the opportunity for personal connection with her fans.
The biggest lesson we learned from bringing one of the largest celebrity brands to life? Less is more. Don’t clutter your brand story with too much hype. In the end, the experience we built with Kylie was a simple design with cheap fixtures that allowed her brand to shine.
“We built this extravagant thing when we started building her store. We built it as a retail beauty store, like Sephora. It was very intense. Then she showed us the Pablo store. It was really a great place with four moving racks and huge vinyl. That’s it. It’s affordable for anyone.” – Michael
(Update: Kylie’s pop-up store in Los Angeles proved to be a successful experience for the Kylie brand, and just two months later, Shopify recreated the experience during New York Fashion Week, shutting down an entire street in Manhattan.)
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