“Confidence In The Chaos”: Bluemercury CEO Maly Bernstein Focuses On Core Strengths Amid Economic Uncertainty
“This is our moment,” says Maly Bernstein, CEO of Macy’s Inc.-owned Bluemercury. “This is our time to create confidence through sticking to our core strengths. The personalized service with the focus on product efficacy in the comfort of your neighborhood couldn’t be more in demand.”
Bluemercury, which has registered 16 consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth, has had pretty good moments leading up to now, but this particular moment could certainly prove—or disprove—its resilience. According to a Bank Of America report, luxury goods spending in the United States declined 12% last month as high-income consumers tightened their purse strings in response to President Donald Trump’s heightening global trade war. In February and January, American luxury spending dipped 9.3% and 5.9%, respectively.
Bluemercury isn’t the only upscale beauty retailer leaning on service and curation to shepherd it through choppy waters. Cos Bar is adopting a back-to-basics strategy to offset the pullback in luxury spending, while valuing the integral role its physical real estate plays in beauty retailing landscape in which digital players like Amazon and TikTok Shop have taken center stage.
Bluemercury is leaning into its locations, too. Last year, Macy’s announced it would open 30 new Bluemercury stores and remodel 30 more over the next three years. New and remodeled stores adopt a new design featuring a prominent center bar, updated spa treatment rooms and a slew of fresh offerings, including from fragrance brands D.S. & Durga, Boy Smells, Parfums De Marly, Creed and Maison Francis Kurkdjian. Bluemercury stocks 219 beauty brands and operates 185 stores across the country.
Timed with its 25th anniversary, Bluemercury rolled out a rebrand it calls “The New Blue” in September last year across its new stores, website and social media. Signified by a blue monogram “B,” the rebrand encapsulates the specialty retailer’s ambition to set the standard in modern luxury beauty.
Beauty Independent spoke with Bernstein about her approach to the business this year, consumer spending changes, assortment strategies and the performance of Bluemercury’s new store format.
How are you feeling about the business with so much going on economically?
Right now, our clients are feeling anxious. In this tumultuous world, the bright star is our calm and caring shopping experience. It’s such an antidote to the chaos out there. It’s about moving in lockstep with our clients’ needs and shifting with their needs as opposed to asserting what their needs are or what they need to be considering.
You can imagine, for example, there’s a lot of talk about wrinkles with all the stress and concerns we feel out there. We’re also finding our clients still want thought partnership from our beauty experts to solve their needs, and they still want to know what’s new at Bluemercury. They want to know about the latest clinical skincare or the latest med-spa skincare brand, and there’s a desire to still self-care.
People still want those things that delight them, especially in this world that scares them. For us, it’s about being a part of their lifestyle and in their neighborhood and feeling like we’re a part of their extended family and friends.
Is there any part of the business that you’re approaching differently this year?
We are going to be doubling down on the core. There’s going to be continued launches in clinical medical skincare, for example. We know that clients enjoy coming into our stores. As a result, we’re giving them more reasons to come into store. You’ll see more eventing in our stores.
Last fall, we launched our rebrand. This year, it’s going to be about, how do we emotionally resonate and connect with our clients even more through our marketing campaigns? We started to bring it to life with Valentine’s Day, and you’re going to see it come to life in fun ways for Mother’s Day and summer.
Do you forecast that Bluemercury customers will change their spending?
The clients are more cautious this year. So, we need to make sure that our service personally connects and is high-touch, and we’re continuing to launch, test and expand the brands we’re seeing have reception. We need to continue to roll out our new Blue experience, which we’ve done both in stores as well as online. We’ve cut over our entire client experience to make sure that we’re leaning into that luxury aesthetic.
When we think about our clients, it’s not that we think they’re not going to spend, we just think it’s going to be hard to predict. The best way to give confidence and encourage the continued love for beauty is to continue to give even more reasons to count on us and understand we’re still there for you. The conservatism is out there, but if you inspire and give reasons for people to take delight in what’s happening in beauty, people still want to engage. We just launched Charlotte Tilbury. Coming up, we’re going to be launching even more brands.
As a business it’s very hard to say we should do more of X versus Y because we want to ensure that we are thinking ahead for our clients, but that we’re also in sync with them so that it feels like a thought partnership versus an assumption or prediction of needs.
What category trends are you watching?
In a world where people are looking for confidence in the chaos, there is growing desire for the science-backed/clinical-backed brand. Our focus is on efficacy. We continue to see that grow, whether it’s in fragrances or in skincare.
Everybody knows that fragrance continues to grow in beauty. It’s really about ones that stand apart based on their scent stories. A good example of that is Parfums de Marly, which talks about how their scents are proven to change the chemicals within your brain that make you feel this way or that way. Men’s fragrances are another opportunity.
The other thing that’s really fun is to talk about men and the resurgence of men’s grooming. It became a thing during COVID, and now we’re seeing the rise of men again in fragrances and grooming, especially in the luxe space.
When you think about what’s happening in clinical skincare, everybody talks about SPF and the neck and decolletage, but now you’re hearing this conversation about how you contour not just the face, but the body. The skincare conversation is broadening to whole health and whole body, and the further ahead you can get in firming and contouring your body, the better.
It’s both preventative as well as the reactive. We launched our M-61 ProSculpt Contour Body Serum and Body Cream that gives you the look of 33% less cellulite and dimples. You’ll see more from us in that space.
In color cosmetics, there’s this desire for confidence in what you’re buying. There’s a growing amount of interest in the skinification of the formulas that people are looking for and the luxurious feel of the textures of lipsticks and makeup. You see brands like Ogee, which we took full chain because their skin formulations and face sticks are doing so well for us.
It’s the same thing when you look at Victoria Beckham Beauty and its partnership with Augustinus Bader. VBB is growing with us. Charlotte Tilbury is expanding into skincare. There’s this continued desire for skin within color.
In haircare, people want healthy hair, but it also needs to look effortless. One of the things that I’m obsessed with, but we’re also seeing really grow across all categories, is serums. Not just skincare, but also in haircare. They’re huge for us.
Is any category showing deceleration?
One of the things that we’re benefiting from at Bluemercury is that we’ve been growing ahead of our parent company and ahead of some retailers. I would say we’ve grown a little bit less in the tools section. There was the rise of tools and now everybody has the tools. Now it’s like, well, what’s the next one? It’s not to say it’s decelerating so much as it’s not growing as much as other areas are.
How robust is the growth across categories right now?
Like I said, the clients have been cautious, but we are seeing that engagement as we continue to give them reasons to shop with us. I’m encouraged. That said, I’m still anxious because I just don’t know what each month or each quarter is going to bring because of the volatility in the tariff changes.
Last year, Macy’s announced it would open 30 Bluemercury stores and remodel 30 more over the next three years. Where are you in that process, and how is the new store format performing for Bluemercury?
We’re still committed to “The New Blue” experience, and what’s so fun is how you’re going to see it come to life this year. We’re still committed to 30 new stores and 30 remodels over three years. Last year, we did 17 new stores and eight remodels. We did some really fun neighborhood locations like Napa Valley and 2nd & PCH in California.
We’re excited about “The New Blue” format because the stores that have flipped into that format and our website have both seen growth as a result of leaning into our service model. Our service bar is the first thing you walk into.
On top of that, the update in our curation with the expansion of fragrances and making sure that we’ve got the broadest and the best in clinical skincare, med-spa skincare and luxury skincare. Then, also updating our color portfolio. That’s why you see Victoria Beckham Beauty, Charlotte Tilbury, Ogee, etc. Then, making sure that we have the best in pro-haircare.
We’re going to continue to roll out that format both in new and remodel, while at the same time promoting the omnichannel shopping experience. Our website continues to meaningfully grow for us as an extension and another destination to shop with us.
There’s been some talk that the remodeled stores aren’t performing to the same level as the older format stores.
No, this is not accurate. These locations are, in fact, exceeding existing store performance, and we are encouraged by our clients’ reception to them.
What are your plans to grow Bluemercury’s e-commerce business this year?
Not all brands are in all stores. For example, we pilot brands in The Cache program in a subset of stores to learn what our clients love. They are almost all available online, giving clients access to a much broader assortment. Clients can count on curated digital experiences like our gift guides for special celebrations like Mother’s Day, which is live right now.
We are using AI to continually refine our client outreach and content across our digital touchpoints. By leveraging a wide range of client signals and interactions, we’re able to gain a deep understanding of each individual’s beauty aspirations. AI enables us to connect them with the right luxury products from our assortment while delivering personalized content that inspires and accelerates purchase intent, bringing the art of beauty discovery into the future.
How’s Bluemercury approaching its spa and services business this year? Are you launching new services, concentrating on what already works or a bit of both?
Spa has and will always be a part of what we offer. It gives us the chance to immerse our clients in their favorite clinical skincare brands with our aestheticians on staff and with our brand partners and aestheticians at events hosted in our stores.
We are working on reopening spas with a high-touch model that makes sense for each neighborhood. Like everyone, our spas were paused during COVID. Now that we are in the midst of our “The New Blue” evolution, we are revamping and opening our spa locations one by one starting with areas that have the highest demand for the services. One of my favorite experiences is training alongside our aestheticians to deeply understand our luxury experience and signature blue touches.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
