Natura opened a concept store on Oscar Freire Street in São Paulo, the street where the Brazilian brand made its debut 51 years ago. This inauguration takes place just four years after Natura has returned to physical retail. The new concept store is part of the brand’s program to transform its own stores in order to provide customers with more opportunities to test products to boost the brand’s multichannel sales.
Natura’s origin dates back in 1969, when the brand’s founder, Luiz Seabra, created the Berjeaut Cosmetics Industry and Trade company. Renamed Natura a few months later, the brand opened a small store in São Paulo in 1970, in the very same street that is now a place to be for designers and major premium brands.
With five decades of history behind it, the brand is returning to the street where it all began with the aim offer consumers a new phygital shopping experience.
“Coming back to Oscar Freire Street makes a lot of sense for the brand. Natura was practically born at this address in São Paulo and it is from there that our relationship marketing model emerged”, explains Paula Andrade, vice-president of Retail at Natura &Co, the group gathering the Natura, Avon, The Body Shop and Aesop brands.
New shopping experience
The store was developed by the architectural firm METRO to be a mix between an art gallery and a shopping area.
"It is a store on the move,which offers the public relevant content in order to reinvent retail, focusing on consumer experience and comfort," continues Paula Andrade. According to the executive, the new retail space must also promote important synergies between the possibilities of digital tools and a physical store.
Visitors will therefore be able to test Natura perfumed products using the perfum.Ar digital solution, to visit an Amazon community with biodegradable virtual reality glasses, to measure their skin’s hydration, analyze strands of their hair or personalize gifts in the Gift Studio. The gift offering, focused on perfumery, personal care and emblematic products from the various Natura lines, such as Ekos, Chronos and Mamãe e Bebê, is one of the strengths of the new address.
The new store also offers a collection point for empty packaging in order to help reduce the environmental impact generated by the improper disposal of products at their end of life. Every five empty packages returned from one of the Natura &Co brands, customers will receive a new Natura product.
The store also offers a for changing diapers area sponsored by Mamãe e Bebê, a make-up studio with a virtual mirror and an outdoor café area.
Nearly 500 brick-n-mortar stores
Currently, the multinational cosmetics company has nearly 500 physical stores, combining own stores and franchises.
Due to the pandemic, a series of measures have been implemented in order to guarantee a safe environment for all: the new Natura store will follow the recommended health and hygiene protocols - including a maximum number of visitors, the obligation to wear a hygiene mask, the provision of hand sanitisers, recommended physical distancing and the removal of testers.
