LONDON — Boots is breaking with tradition and transforming its high-growth, social-media fueled categories into stand-alone concepts, the latest of which is an experiential fragrance store near Liverpool Street station in London.
The Boots Fragrance boutique is located within the new retail development Broadgate Central, and carries 400 scents ranging from the niche to the well-known, with prices that stretch from mass to luxury.
They range from marquee names such as Tom Ford Private Blend, Prada Les Infusions and Hermès to new, niche names such as Tobba, which is based in Hong Kong, Bella Hadid’s Orebella, and Lumira, a B Corp-certified brand from Sydney.
There is a focus on experience, with more testers than ever on display, and a strong service angle, too. Boots has filled the shop floor with fragrance specialists who’ve been given advanced training on scent profiling and matching.
Boots Fragrance also offers a concierge service that aims to help people find their signature scent (or combination of scents) and to choose the right juice for major moments such as weddings.
To accompany the physical space Boots has also launched a fragrance hub on Boots.com and the Boots app, with click-and-collect service in more than 1,600 stores.
Although the Broadgate store is the only stand-alone planned for now, Boots is planning to open around 49 upgraded fragrance spaces across the U.K. More than half will open by Christmas with a further 20 after the holiday period, and each will have special displays that focus on the new, niche brands.
“Our mission at the start of the year was to bring the joy back to shopping for fragrance on the U.K. high street — and we are really on an exciting journey,” said Chelsey Saunders, director of beauty at Boots, in an interview. She added that Boots is eager for customers to “test, learn and play.”
The stand-alone Boots Fragrance boutique, which carries 400 scents ranging from the niche to the well-known.
Grace Vernon, Boots’ global cultural insight and trend lead, said “the big fragrance boom is a trend we’ve been tracking for a while. People just so engaged in fragrance, and are using it as a way to showcase their personalities. They’re creating wardrobes, and layering and using luxury, premium, and different iterations of fragrances together.”
She cited a Euromonitor report that was published in July, saying that fragrances are set to account for 23 percent of absolute growth in the beauty industry between 2024 and 2029, with a forecast compound annual growth rate of 5.5 percent. The U.K. fragrance market alone is on track to surpass 2 billion pounds by 2029, according to Mintel.
There are many different forces fueling the boom.
According to Saunders and Vernon, customers are increasingly using fragrance as a wellness tool, to boost or create a mood, and even to reinforce a sense of friendship and community. Vernon said teenage boys are a fast-growing demographic, in some cases clubbing together to purchase a single bottle of pricey fragrance, which they later decant into smaller bottles for their own use.
Vernon added that consumers are “experimenting at both ends of the scale,” seeking value, but also ready to splurge if they find something they love. Boots, she believes, is ideally positioned to offer them the full spectrum.
Saunders concurred. “This is not a boutique full of products that cost 350 pounds. Some even start at 20 pounds. You can take home a sampler set, a layering set or something in a small size that’s perfect for travel,” she said.
Vernon pointed to another big driver behind sales, TikTok. “It has opened the door to some of these niche brands that people haven’t heard of before,” she said, adding that TikTokkers are now able to do what would have been impossible a few years ago.
“They’re selling fragrance through a screen and immersing viewers in brands by talking about them in a really sensorial way,” she added.
The stand-alone Boots Fragrance store, where there are experts on hand to help and counters filled with testers.
The renewed enthusiasm for scent has also led Boots to change the way it merchandises its fragrances.
“We don’t differentiate between men’s and women’s — things have become much more unisex. It’s more about a person wanting something oud-y, woody, smoky or fresh. It’s not around gender, but about your tastes and what you’re interested in,” said Vernon.
Despite its enthusiasm for the category, Boots has taken care not to send its customers into sensory overload.
“We’ve tried to help consumers navigate the fragrances by creating discovery tables and segmenting the brands into categories such as modern, romantic and classical — and allowing them to serve themselves,” said Saunders.
The fragrance store opening is part of a wider push at Boots. The retailer is in the thick of a “Make More Room for Beauty” campaign, of which fragrance is a big part, and last week it announced an accelerator program designed to help the next generation of founders “become global household names.”
Boots has teamed with Growth Studio on the program, which is called Breakout Beauty. Products range from gender-neutral deodorant and purpose-driven skin care to brands based on the founders’ cultural heritage. In addition to Boots, headline partners include TikTok Shop, HSBC Innovation Banking and the health and beauty distributor FDD International.
The Broadgate Central opening follows another experimental concept space, a stand-alone beauty and skin care store at Battersea Power Station in London.
“Our concept stores allow us to trial things and give a platform to be innovative, bold and brave,” said Saunders, adding that the Battersea store trialed derm-focused pharmacy services that eventually rolled out to hundreds of Boots stores in the U.K.
Customers can have skin scans, talk to trained dermatologists about specific concerns and receive guidance on products in addition to shopping fragrance, hair care and cosmetics.
On the heels of that opening two years ago, Boots has redesigned more than 180 beauty halls and trained more than 1,400 beauty specialists with an emphasis on expertise and customer service.
The new Boots Fragrance Boutique carries big-name and niche brands.
