Amazingy Invites Shoppers To Play With Beauty Products At Its First Store

Organic and natural beauty e-tailer Amazingy has branched into brick-and-mortar with the opening of its first retail location a few steps away from company headquarters in Berlin’s trendy Friedrichshain neighborhood.

Dubbed Amazingy Playground, the new store houses around 90 beauty brands across facial care, body care, hair care, color cosmetics, baby, men’s, inner beauty, deodorants and more. It features a simple interior design with white walls, black metal shelves and lush green plants, and a small photo studio for generating on-the-spot content.

“We opened this store because our customers asked us to,” says Amazingy founder Floris van Onna. “We have always invited customers into our warehouse/office to test and try things, but we were completely running out of space there. So, we moved the office out of the warehouse, and the store is now next to the office. It’s my dream to merge everything again and have one big place from where we do everything, but it’s very hard to find a space that’s big enough and not in the middle of nowhere.”

Amazingy’s assortment includes stars of the clean beauty scene, but the company’s portfolio also goes far beyond the mainstream. Its store sells brands from around the world such as Nuori from Denmark; Ami Iyok from Spain; Abhati from Switzerland; Raaw in a Jar, Lina Hanson, Mun, Yüli, Vintner’s Daughter and Josh Rosebrook from the U.S.; Whamisa from Korea; Balm Balm and Therapi from the U.K., Vestige Verdant from Estonia; Alex Carro from Spain; and Abel from the Netherlands.

Amazingy’s selection criteria for new brands are strict and the brand evaluation process can be lengthy. “Almost the entire team is constantly testing new brands and products. We only take on brands that almost everybody likes,” says Floris. “So, when we really love something and the ingredients are good, we take a brand on, especially if the brand sort of fills a gap in our portfolio. It’s not our goal to simply sell as many brands as possible as a lot of other stores do.”

Floris continues, “We can really get to know products and give the best advice possible. Brands offer us exclusivity quite often, but we never ask for it and don’t want it. We don’t want to pressure brands by telling them what they can and cannot do, and I definitely don’t want to be the one to close doors for them to other nice stores.”

One of the primary purposes of opening a store is to offer customers the opportunity to test out beauty brands. Amazingy Playground does exactly that. Every single beauty product available in the store comes with a tester, even the most expensive serums and face oils, and customers are encouraged to try the cosmetics as much as they like.

“We like calling it the Playground because the store is there for our customers to play with the products and not necessarily to buy something. But, in the end, it’s just a nickname,” says Floris. “The new retail store is a service to our existing customers, an extension of our online experience, which consists not only of the web store, but also an online publication, Amazingy Magazine.”

Floris underscores that the offline and online components Amazingy are well integrated. “When customers make a purchase, everything goes through their online account, if they have one,” he says. “They can see what they have bought, download the invoice, get reward points, etc. It’s really shopping 2.0. In our new store, we have touch monitors hanging on the walls, which people can use to browse the products, see ingredients and so on. Our goal is, of course, to have all brands in there, but at the moment the store offers around 70% of our online brand line-up.”

Amazingy, which is owned by Flowing Cosmetics, a distributor working with the likes of Konjac Sponge Co., Kahina Giving Beauty, Fresh Therapies, Absolution, Good Clean Love, Ilia Beauty, Dr. Alkaitis, Kjaer Weis, Abel Odor and its own brand Hiro Cosmetics, may not stop at a single store. Floris mentions the possibility of franchising the Amazingy Playground concept. He says, “We’d have to find the perfect partner, though, and, so far, there are no real plans, although some people have showed interest.”