Goop is opening a new store in the Bay Area at the Marin Country Mart in Larkspur, Calif., on Friday. It’s the company’s sixth retail location.
For the first time, the company will unveil an in-store treatment room. It was “a pipe dream” of founder Gwyneth Paltrow to open “an experiential facial room,” said Matthew Blythe, senior director of retail operations and development at Goop.
“Early on, when we were designing the store, we baked it in and designed that into the layout,” he continued. “We’ve never done something like this before. We have offered sometimes trunk shows where we’ve done limited facials in the store, but this is a completely new concept.”
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The store opens on Friday, but the treatment room will open at a future to-be-determined date, with sign-ups available online or in-store.
“It’s something that we’re working on to make sure that we get right — having a focused aesthetician that we can offer, an experience which goes a step further in educating the customer and also just giving them an amazing time in the space as well,” Blythe added.
Orange County–based design firm ViaClover is behind the design, a 1,300-square-foot space with checkered pattern tiles and Vienna oak floors. It features neutrals and organic textures, showcasing a light installation by the Melbourne-based Volker Haug Studio.
“She was looking at prewar New York apartments mixed with vintage French cafés,” Blythe said of Paltrow’s design direction.
Prior to investing in permanent stores, Goop first tested out different markets with pop-up experiences before opening the first brick-and-mortar in 2017 in Brentwood, a quiet and upscale neighborhood in Los Angeles. The company went on to open a store location every year; in 2018 came Sag Harbor in New York, then Santa Barbara inside the Rosewood Miramar Beach, followed by Mauna Lani in Hawaii and New York’s Bond Street in 2021.
“When I joined, the five retail stores that we have were doing really well,” said Blythe, who joined in 2022 from Outerknown and after nine years at Ralph Lauren. “There were opportunities for them to do even better. From 2022 to 2023 they grew about 20 percent [in comparable sales], and they’re continuing to grow double-digit growth year-over-year.”
Year to date, retail sales are up 19 percent to 2023, according to Goop, which expects to see the trend continue with the opening of the new store. Its consumers are said to be highly engaged and affluent, with the majority averaging a household income of $125,000.
It’s the in-house brands Goop Beauty and G. Label that sell particularly well. The new store will offer an assortment of both, along with fine jewelry, homewares and wellness goods. Art by Fromental designed in collaboration with Paltrow is also available for purchase in the store.
“I’m really making sure that the stores that we currently have are continuing to grow and be optimized,” said Blythe. “And then really just looking at our expansion strategy, to which markets that we would want to go into, which was really sort of focused on community-based interactions. So really having a solid ‘why’ behind entering that market and being really connected to the hub of that community.”
There are plans to open as many as 20 Goop stores, he added: “Anywhere between one to three stores a year is a really good growth strategy.”
Where to next?
“Greenwich has always been on my radar,” he said of possible future store locations. “Palm Beach, Aspen, and even areas within Texas. There’s just such amazing shopping locations there. So those four are probably the ones that I think are the most exciting and sort of no-brainer locations for us to move into.”
