SINGAPORE. French luxury beauty brand Lancôme Travel Retail has unveiled a Holiday Wonders pop-up store at Changi Airport in an ambitious Trinity partnership with The Shilla Duty Free and Changi Airport Group.
The pop-up store, which is open at the Terminal 3 Departure Transit Hall (Central) from 8 October to 10 November, is the first of its kind at Changi, Lancôme Travel Retail said.
The store was launched to celebrate the brand’s ‘Declaring Happiness’ global campaign and the release of Lancôme Advanced Génifique Sensitive. The Lancôme augmented reality virtual makeover app, Virtual Mirror, is also being introduced as a travel retail worldwide exclusive at Changi Airport.
Immersive retail experiences
The Lancôme Holiday Wonders pop-up store celebrates the brand’s manifesto ‘Declaring Happiness’ through a series of immersive retail experiences. These invite travellers on a Parisian escapade inspired by the City of Light.
Quintessential Parisian aesthetics and chic pink hues feature throughout the pop-up store, which is fitted with luxurious wooden floors and a chimney. The store also features an Ô window that offers a striking virtual view of the Eiffel Tower.
To complete the Parisian experience, customers can snap photos of themselves ‘flying’ over Paris holding a Lancôme floating gift balloon at the brand photo booth.
“Lancôme is about making women’s lives more beautiful and we are rooted in the belief that happiness, more than anything, makes women beautiful,” said Lancôme Travel Retail Asia General Manager Tao Zhang. “We are pleased to partner The Shilla Duty Free and Singapore Changi Airport for our very first travel retail pop-up store debut. Changi Airport is the leading travel hub for key gateway Asian cities and has a vibrant retail environment that plays well with our brand efforts to spread happiness worldwide.”
Lancôme Travel Retail said that the Holiday Wonders pop-up store marked an exciting milestone for the division. It also reaffirms the brand’s ambition to “share happiness” with global beauty enthusiasts through a unique travel-exclusive retail experience during the holiday period.
Lancôme Travel Retail said: “The Lancôme Holiday Wonders pop-up store takes direction from the brand’s philosophy to help women achieve the elusive je ne sais quoi [an indefinable quality] that exudes happiness, confidence and French chic appeal by converging best-in-class experiences for a stronger engagement with global travellers.”
The Virtual Mirror is an augmented reality makeover application that allows customers to instantly try on eye, lip and cheek make-up or test trendy make-up looks designed by Lancôme experts. Another digital touchpoint can be found at the pop-up entrance, where customers can play an interactive digital game for an opportunity to win L’Absolu Rouge lipstick samples.
Within the pop-up store, a Lancôme sharing table allows customers to experiment with textures and colours, as well as test-drive tailor-made skincare routines or make-up looks under the guidance of the brand’s beauty advisors.
On 14 and 15 October, Lancôme Travel Retail National Make-up Artist Vic Tu, will host a beauty show at the pop-up, sharing beauty tips for all travelers. Changi Rewards Members will have an exclusive invitation to reserve one-on-one appointments at the pop-up store with a dedicated Lancôme make-up expert.
Changi Airport Group Senior Vice President of Airside Concessions Teo Chew Hoon said: “At Changi Airport, we continually strive to redefine the travel retail experience for our shoppers through innovative concepts and exciting brand partnerships.
“The timely debut of Lancôme pop-up store at Changi Airport this holiday season will certainly delight and surprise our travellers with its latest offerings and holiday travel exclusives.”
“Retail-tainment and innovation have always been at the forefront of our consumer-centric strategy, as these are the drivers that will provide a differentiated shopping experience for our travellers,” said The Shilla Duty Free Vice President of Global Merchandise Division Raelene Johnson.
“We are confident that this Holiday Wonders pop-up will resonate well with our travellers and we look forward to future partnerships with Lancôme Travel Retail to introduce more interesting concepts and covetable travel offerings.”
Travellers can also purchase beauty travel exclusives via Changi Airport’s online duty-free shopping site, iShopChangi.
In addition, customers who purchase the ‘Your Perfect Travel Companion’ sets at the pop-up store will also receive an exclusive holiday collectible – a ‘Lancôme x Singapore’ luggage tag with complimentary engraving services. This offer is available on the weekends of 21 to 22 October and 28 to 29 October.
To celebrate this inaugural Trinity partnership with The Shilla Duty Free and Changi Airport Group, Lancôme Travel Retail will host a corporate event on Monday 16 October. The event will kick off with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and guests will be encouraged to interact with the pop-up’s various retail experiences.
Such experiential, partnership-driven promotions are surely the way forward as travel retail constantly refines, even reinvents, itself, in a retail universe increasingly dominated by e-commerce and social and digital media.
Comment: Anyone who attended L’Oréal Travel Retail’s superbly insightful media conference at last week’s TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes will know how many key boxes this partnership ticks, writes Martin Moodie.
Channel exclusivity? Tick. Personalisation? Tick? Social media interaction? Tick. Partnership with retailer and airport? Tick. Serving millennials looking for skincare and make-up? Tick. Click and collect? Tick. Customer engagement? Tick, tick and triple tick.
Such experiential, partnership-driven promotions are surely the way forward as travel retail constantly refines, even reinvents, itself, in a retail universe increasingly dominated by e-commerce and social and digital media.
The message from industry leaders, such as L’Oréal Travel Retail Managing Director Vincent Boinay (a key speaker at next month’s Trinity Forum in Bangkok) last week, is that the fusion of the in-store experience with the reach, immediacy, engagement and networking capacity of social media offers a clear and encouraging road map to a vibrant future.
