Covid-19 has not only changed the market dynamics but also triggered a consumer behavior change in favour of the beauty & makeup industry. While many brands faced hardships during the lockdown period, SUGAR Cosmetics continued to spread the joy of makeup to their fanbase through these difficult times. The proof of this has been when the brand reached 50% more revenue than their pre-Covid highest during the recent festive season and continues to experience an uptick in sales.
In line with the brand’s core mission of expanding distribution, SUGAR Cosmetics has continued to invest in brick-and-mortar stores; they have launched their third store in Mumbai at the Oberoi Mall, Goregaon East on January 1st, 2021. This is their sixth store launch during the pandemic.
SUGAR Cosmetics, one of the fastest-growing beauty brands in the country, started off as a D2C brand that quickly ventured into offline trade. SUGAR grew from 1000+ retail outlets in 2019 to 2500+ outlets in over 130 cities as of today. While a lot of brands are rescinding their plans of opening stores and even shutting down existing ones, SUGAR Cosmetics launched Exclusive Brand Stores in Surat & Gurugram, and three new Brand Owned Kiosks at Lucknow, Ghaziabad and Chennai, keeping hygiene and safety as a top priority for their retail customers. The brand also plans on opening more stores in Indore, Raipur, Kolkata and Hyderabad. In the past six months, the brand has built retail exclusive merchandise to keep consumers enticed and done experiential marketing campaign in stores for Halloween and Christmas. To amplify the reach various OOH activities have also gone live in 33 cities.
Speaking about the launch, Vineeta Singh, Co-Founder & CEO, SUGAR Cosmetics said, “At SUGAR Cosmetics we have ensured to stay put and focused on our core pillars – distribution, product and content. What keeps us encouraged is the support from our customers who continued to indulge in the ‘feel-good’ items like ours even during pandemic times. To explain this in numbers – we noticed over 5 lakh SUGAR products were bought in November, 50% of which was offline. According to our research, almost 60% of SUGAR’s customers prefer to shop in brick-and-mortar outlets as they still crave that in-person interaction with a beauty advisor and the touch & feel experience that a store can provide. Keeping these factors in mind we launched our third brand-owned outlet in Mumbai and don’t plan to stop our on-ground expansion.”
With an approx. carpet area of under 350 sq ft. the store will house all the best picks in categories that cover Lips, Eyes, Face, Nails & Skin allowing customers to enjoy a plethora of 450+ beauty & makeup products. The product range extends from liquid to bullet to crayon to pencil formats in lipsticks to liquid, stick and cushion formats in foundations to an array of unique skincare water-based, clay-based and charcoal-based skin care products designed for young Indian women. While makeup trials and makeovers are temporarily suspended, the SUGAR Makeup Artists and Beauty Advisors at the stores demonstrate the products on themselves. The store also has adequate visual merchandising, video screens and look books to aid customers to choose the right shade of makeup. All the retail staff also daily undergoes all the safety and hygiene guidelines issued by the government.
Store Address: Unit No. S-33, Second Floor of Oberoi Mall, Western Express Hwy, Yashodham, Goregaon, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400063
