MAC Innovation Lab
What: a digital playground for the American beauty brand.
Why it is important: in times of pandemic; MAC Innovation Lab blends together the physical and digital retail experience perfectly.
The beauty brand opened last month its MAC Innovation Lab in the Queens neighbourhood in New York City. The store is a digital playground for beauty lovers and boats community-centric looks and assortment. It follows the opening of a first MAC Innovation Lab last year in Shanghai, and is a good example of how to mix physical and virtual retail.
Digital
The Queens store features various omnichannel experiences. At the centre of the store is the Art Studio, with 16 stations furnished with augmented reality virtual try-on mirrors to experiment make-up in a safe way, especially in a pandemic. An infrared touch-screen matches every shade of skin, even the most unique, to try and test foundations, making it an inclusive tool. There are also plenty of digital touch screens and QR codes to navigate MAC's mobile store portal, mixing the physical and digital experience.
Instore x online experience
Indeed, the instore digital experience continues online as, once customers have tried on some looks virtually, they can save them on their mobile. Once home they can review them, research for products and eventually make an online purchase.
Exclusivity
A great attraction in the store is the "Design Your Palette" station, which allows customers to choose from more than 100 eye shadows to make their very own make-up palette. This is not completely new as some other brands offer the same services; such as ByTerry which even offers the possibility to mix up to three pigments in one pod (the brand launched in Le Bon Marché earlier this year). Getting even more personal, a printing station is available for customers to customise their products packaging with images, text or emojis.
Community
The real asset of MAC Innovation Studio is that it prides itself on being hyper-local and community-centric. How? By offering content and looks that echoes within the community. The assortment has been organised to cater for the locals of Queens, and the virtual looks to try on, created by MAC makeup artists, are based on what is popular in the store vicinity.
Community, and to by the same token inclusivity, have increasingly become a subject of interest in retail and especially in beauty. Singer Rihanna was the first to advocate inclusivity through her Fenty Beauty line and now many other brands are following her lead.
What to learn from MAC Innovation Lab
With this new store, MAC Cosmetics proves that it is not impossible to link the physical, virtual and online experiences to make it a complete one. Becoming omnichannel has been a subject for years and is still very topical, especially in the current health crisis.
MAC Cosmetics also integrates the importance of community at the centre of its project. Diversity is on every lips at the moment (review IADS Exclusive piece: Diversity: a strategy of silence), retailers are starting to understand how important it is to cater to all communities, which eventually leads to a wider customer audience. The topic of community is also intimately linked to the local tendency that is trending at the moment. Nike is reaching out to the people of Paris directly through its House of Innovation 002 and for the past months many retailers had to count on their local clientele to stay afloat. Chances are that the trend will continue after the pandemic and retailers and brands need to be thinking already of what it means for their current business (review IADS Exclusive piece on local retail)
(Article credits: Louise Ancora)