Space NK’s new London flagship could easily be mistaken for a candy store.
To wit: a centrepiece of the cavernous new store is brightly coloured display of tubes hanging from the ceiling, filled to the brim with products, and a gumball-style dispenser at the bottom, all under a sign that reads “play” in all caps.
It’s a far cry from the minimalist apothecary-style boutiques that have studded the UK’s most exclusive postcodes since the 1990s. But since 2022, when the British retailer debuted its first colourful, interactive store in Battersea Shopping Centre, it has invested in more youthful and immersive shopping experiences. The new store, opening on Aug. 8 on Oxford Street in the nation’s most famous shopping district, is its boldest gambit yet at over 4,600 square feet in a space previously occupied by the fashion retailer Topshop.
“It’s definitely the most ambitious store we’ve attempted… it’s been a significant investment for us,” said Andy Lightfoot, chief executive officer, describing it as “Willy Wonka-esque.”
It’s also a clear play to attract younger shoppers — Lightfoot said its fastest-growing demographic is under-25s. The so-called “Sephora tweens” frenzy has seen customers as young as 11 pour into premium beauty retailers like Space NK, Ulta Beauty and Sephora in search of trending brands like Summer Fridays, Drunk Elephant and Laneige. Making stores more colourful and interactive and putting lower-priced goods like lip balms and hand creams, or even non-beauty goods like water bottles and purse charms front and centre can tempt those young customers to open up their (parents’) wallets.
It’s also part of a growing trend towards beauty mega-stores. The Australian prestige beauty retailer Mecca will open a new multi-storey flagship in a well-heeled locale of Melbourne on August 8, which will boast an area for injectable services as well as a makeup “atelier,” while LVMH-owned Sephora reopened its Parisian crown jewel store in October 2023 with exclusive brands, a fragrance engraving station and complimentary gift wrapping. As interest in beauty grows across age groups, retailers are working harder to inspire customer curiosity and increase time spent in-store.
Lightfoot admits the new store is a departure from its original modus operandi, but he sees it as an evolution, not revolution, of its brand identity. He also said it won’t turn off the retailers’ longstanding core demographic of Gen-X and Boomer women, who may have been shopping with the retailer for more than 10 years.
“The play area will generally [attract] a younger customer, but won’t necessarily be exclusively a younger customer. It’s a mindset, rather than an age, and we’re also doubling down on our other areas of expertise,” he said.
Differentiation Matters
The location of the new store guarantees footfall. Making it a true destination, however, will require differentiation: On Oxford Street, Selfridges’ and Liberty’s storied beauty halls are only a stone’s throw away.
Alongside the “play” space, the store will boast a specialised fragrance area with dedicated staff, interactive screens to help customers find cheek and lip products from across its brand assortment (which includes Nars, Rare Beauty and Laura Mercier), as well as “expertise pods” where customers can have longer consultations with sales assistants. It will also offer an assortment of more than 50 K-beauty products curated by Charlotte Cho, the founder of dedicated Korean retailer Soko Glam, as well as new exclusive brands, including Kay Beauty and Kulfi Beauty, two Indian-owned prestige labels.
Lightfoot said the large South Asian diaspora in the UK — around 20 percent of London’s population and around 7 percent of the country’s total population are South Asian — meant brands like Kay Beauty and Kulfi Beauty were hotly anticipated. The ultimate goal is bringing together a few seemingly disparate aims: while the under-25s are the retailer’s fastest-growing demographic, Lightfoot said the over 65 and over 35 cohorts are also in double or triple-digit growth.
“We have to cater to all of those shopping missions simultaneously,” he said.
The store is also an attempt to defend and grow its market share, which has been under threat since LVMH-owned Sephora re-opened in the UK in 2023 after a hiatus of almost 20 years. The Walgreens-owned chain Boots, which is ubiquitous in the UK, has also pivoted away from its core drug offering to open more dedicated beauty stores with niche brands. A flagship store in an iconic district also allows it to plant a flag in the UK market: the company, which is owned by the investor Manzanita Capital, divested its US business which included a shop-in-shop partnership with Walmart in 2024 amidst reports that it is exploring a sale.
Lightfoot said beyond the store’s obvious extravagance, its highly trained staff, generous loyalty programme and brand assortment would help it stand out, and that even the most gimmicky-sounding elements were carefully calibrated.
“We’ve been very careful not to go down the path of taking a really big space and then trying to work out to fill it,” he said.
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