-and-mortar store.  Building an incredible shopping experience in-store  During a panel dubbed “Brick by brick: The business of branded retail”, Malin, Parsiegla and Errett explained how they tailor their store design to reflect their brands’ ethos.  Seipp noted that when Malin + Goetz first launched in 2004, the lifestyle brand opened a physical store practically straight out of the gate.  “From the very beginning, my career had been centered in retail, having been with Saks Fifth Avenue and Barneys as a buyer, and with Kiehl’s as their director of sales. Having that perspective about the retail industry, it was really important to me that we would we able to tell our own story directly, without the constraints of a retail partner, with a store from the get-go to set the stage,” Malin responded. “It was probably one of the best decisions we’ve ever made, and I would absolutely do it all over again.” Malin said the brand’s store concept came from the idea of how to take the traditional neighbourhood apothecary and make it modern.  With a team of architects and industrial designers, Malin and co-founder Andrew Goetz were able to showcase the brand’s range of skin, body and fragrance products in a way that felt reminiscent of how consumers in a bygone era shopped for lotions and potions. The stores were also located in places where the brand’s ideal consumers, like Malin and Goetz themselves, would live.  Malin referenced the brand’s first store in Chelsea, which he and Goetz ran as “shopkeepers”. Since that first apothecary opened, Malin + Goetz have launched 20 permanent and freestanding stores worldwide, with flagship “apothecaries” in New York, Los Angeles, London and Hong Kong.  Similarly, hair care and colour brand Madison Reed decided to begin opening bricks-and-mortar spaces, initially with pop-up shops, in 2016, not long after launching as a direct-to-consumer (DTC) business in 2013.  “It was very clear to us from the beginning that we had to make a fantastic, salon-quality product,” Errett, the Madison Reed founder, recalled.  Shortly after the brand’s products were launched onto the market, salon stylists began inquiring about buying Madison Reed’s tubes of colour directly.  Combined with the fact that approximately 50 per cent of women colour their hair at home and the other 50 per cent go to the salon, Errett and her team realised there was an opportunity for the company to serve customers both in the comfort of their own homes and with an in-house salon experience.  There are 95 Madison Reed salons spread out across the US as of 2025.  Reviving the in-store experience for the next generation of consumers Margo Parsiegla, the chief executive officer of Amouage, explained that boutiques have played a foundational role in the luxury fragrance house since it opened its first one in 1985. “From the very beginning, as a high perfumery house from the Sultan of Oman, it was very important for us to transport our values [into a physical space],” Persiegla recalled.  Now that the brand has celebrated its 42nd anniversary, it has become even more vital that the brand has a corporeal setting for consumers to browse and explore the brand’s products.  In 2021 to 2022, Persiegla stated that the brand was “at a tipping point” and had begun making a shift in “moving the boutiques from a very transactional concept to an experimental concept. Amouage aims to provide a more immersive and transformative store concept for its luxury-seeking clientele with artistic store designs.  For example, Persiegla highlighted one concept store in Oman that was inspired by a desert eclipse. Looking from the outside, the products are barely visible. Upon walking into the store, shoppers initially see a large sphere and then they’re able to see more and more products as they circle the store and get a truly sensorial experience while testing out the brand’s 60-plus fragrances.  While curated shops have been an important part of the brand’s approach to selling inventory, Persiegla commented, “I think the concept and the role of the boutique is very much evolving. We have more than doubled our business in the last three years and we believe that the [updated] boutique concept has been a key enabler for that.” Even in today’s digitally-focused age of shopping, Errett emphasised the importance of brands having a physical presence versus just a DTC platform.  “If you are an online business, no one gets to understand who you are, your culture, how the company operates and what the brand stands for,” she explained.  With a DTC shop “it’s just the screen or an app,” she said. “When someone walks into your store, that is where the rubber meets the road and where everything about your brand comes to life. It’s going to become more and more important as we become a world that has a lot of brands and where there’s a lot of noise to be able to rise above all that.”