This week, Glossy spotlights the power of specialty stores. While department stores’ demands and terms are turning brands away, specialty stores — often offering new awareness, desirable brand alignment, target consumer-focused curations and inspiring physical footprints — are becoming go-to retail partners. We’re spotlighting five U.S. stores that leading brands are betting on now.
Despite the luxury sector’s slowdown, Macy’s Inc.-owned Bluemercury is having a gangbuster year.
Seven months post-rebrand, the 25-year-old retailer is a luxury beauty leader thanks to new locations in affluent neighborhoods, an evolving curation of today’s top luxury brands and a sales staff considered to be some of the best in the business.
“The service level is just something else,” Signe Ögren Kull, North America vp of Maria Nila Swedish professional hair care, told Glossy. “It’s a community, not just a store.”
The retailer currently stocks more than 200 luxury beauty brands across its 185 stores and counting. Macy’s Inc. acquired Bluemercury in 2015, and it continues to be a bright spot for the struggling retailer: Bluemercury just charted its 16th consecutive quarter of comparable sales growth. That’s juxtaposed against a December announcement that Macy’s will close roughly 150 underperforming stores by 2027 to refocus on the luxury consumer.
“There are a lot of things that shifted in the U.S. over the last five years, [and we’ve spent a lot of time] trying to figure out where our customer is going to be shopping in the future,” said Mark Ferdman, president of clinical skin-care brand Dr. Diamond Metacine. More specifically, the retailer has focused on where a customer is likely to spend upward of $200 per skin-care SKU.
“[Bluemercury’s shopper] is already pretty educated about skin care, and they’re willing to invest when they know something’s going to work,” Ferdman said.
According to location analytics firm Placer.ai, which leverages millions of devices to capture data on brick-and-mortar shopping patterns, Bluemercury’s foot traffic has been steadily growing year over year. For example, the firm reported positive growth for the retailer over the past six months, including a 13% increase in foot traffic in January and more than 8% growth in foot traffic in February and March of this year.
“Bluemercury has been a standout among beauty retailers over the last six months,” Elizabeth Lafontaine, director of research at Placer.ai, told Glossy. “[It] continues to grow its visitation despite changing tides in the beauty industry that have contributed to traffic declines in other beauty and self-care chains.”
A large part of this is Bluemercury’s continued investment in science-backed, clinical skin care, a top category of interest for wealthy shoppers.
“One of the most interesting things about the Bluemercury customer is that they’re highly educated and want products that work, especially in skin care,” Stephanie Keene, managing director of merchandising at Bluemercury, told Glossy. “They’re also beauty enthusiasts and live in elevated neighborhoods, and they’re really looking for that consultation with the beauty expert.”
Keene told Glossy that skin care makes up about half of Bluemercury’s sales, with color cosmetics in second, followed by hair care and fragrance. Body care, as well as men’s grooming, beard care and fragrance are top focuses for 2025, while oral care, wellness and sexual wellness remain a limited focus.
“There are very few retailers that can specialize in curated, clinical-science brands that are also luxury, [and] they really train their beauty experts quite well,” said aesthetician and skin-care founder Angela Caglia, whose eponymous brand charted 437% sales growth last year.
Bluemercury continues to be a bright spot for Macy’s Inc., which also owns Bloomingdale’s. For example, during its fourth quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call on March 6, the group reported 6.2% comparable sales growth for Bluemercury, while Bloomingdale’s reached 4.8% and Macy’s charted 0.8%.
“[Bluemercury] has done an excellent job in location selection, product knowledge and service offerings that all contribute to an elevated experience for its high-income consumer base,” said Placer.ai’s Lafontaine. “The brand has also curated an assortment that is unique and tailored to both shopper needs and the latest trends in beauty that keep the retailer on the cutting edge.”
The Bluemercury shopper tends to be a high-income, older woman, Keene told Glossy. Bluemercury prefers all brands to have in-person training with staff, including gratis products for employees. Brands must have a marketing budget for shopper gifting and gifts-with-purchase. Participation in its summer and winter discounting promotions is done by almost all brands.
“We’re really passionate about sampling and making sure that the customer can bring something home, try it and fall in love with it before they feel pressured to purchase,” Keene said.
Brands Glossy spoke to report that these in-depth, in-person trainings deliver visible sales results.
“If you educate the team members correctly, if you visit them and keep tight communication, they have such a strong relationship with their customers that it will be a pretty smooth sell,” said Maria Nila’s Kull. “[I have seen] customers take their time to try out products, whether it’s hair care, makeup or skin care, and walk out of the door with 10 new products. I haven’t really seen that in any other retail space before.”
The Swedish hair-care brand was founded in 2019 and launched its foray into U.S. brick and mortar last year at Bluemercury.
As previously reported by Glossy, Macy’s Inc. is betting on Bluemercury’s continued success. In 2024, Bluemercury opened 17 new stores and completed eight remodels as part of a plan to open 30 new stores and remodel an additional 30 in the coming years. It’s anchored by a 2024 rebrand and in-store redesign for its 25th anniversary last year.
Referred to internally as “the new blue,” the redesign included updated branding as well as in-store updates: updated spa rooms, a larger center service bar and an expanded curation. For example, Bluemercury welcomed cult-status brands such as Byredo and Charlotte Tilbury and is betting on new clinical skin-care brands like Dr. Whitney Bowe Beauty and The Beauty Sandwich.
Meanwhile, Bluemercury’s newest locations provide access to luxury shoppers. There’s Bel Aire Plaza in Napa Valley, 2nd & PCH in Long Beach, and Los Angeles’s celebrity-favorite Glenn Center, all of which have opened in the past few months. Medium household income in these areas is $148,000, $111,000 and $220,000, respectively, based on 2023 Census data.
A small percentage of Bluemercury stores are shop-in-shop locations within Macy’s locations, although Keene told Glossy that these few locations have a narrow curation developed to serve the Macy’s customer. Bluemecury also owns three in-house brands: clinical skin-care brand M-61, color cosmetics line Lune+Aster and, launched in September, a body and home fragrance line called Cerulean 6°.
Bluemercury closed its in-store spa rooms in 2020 due to Covid, which Keene described as a great pause point to reassess that arm of the business. Currently, the rooms are slowly being renovated and are primarily used for gratis treatments by brand reps as a way to sample and educate the consumer.
“We are really trying to stay focused on our calm and caring shopping experience amid all of the chaos,” Keene said. “We’re moving lockstep with our clients’ needs, really focusing more on what they want and need, rather than asserting to them what they need and what they should be considering.”
