It’s happened with skincare, it’s happening with oral care, could Vacation by Poolside FM be the ones to make sunscreen a feel-good ritual, not a chore?
There are many reasons we all love to hate sunscreen. It’s expensive, it’s impractical (who can be arsed to reapply it throughout the day?!), it feels icky or it leaves a white zinc oxide cast on the skin. It’s just not a pleasure.
Enter Vacation by Poolside FM, a brand extension of the 80s throwback online radio station and app. Its premise is to make a sunscreen as nostalgic and joy-inducing as the radio station, while also making it beautiful to use. As such, it’s lightweight, vegan and cruelty free, reef-friendly and formulated with the help of Elizabeth Hale, M.D, a vice president of the Skin Cancer Foundation.
It’s also infused with the scent of coconut ice cream, pina coladas, orange flower and monoi flower, thanks to perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux and fragrance developer Carlos Huber. “Just because it’s attached to a functional product doesn’t mean it can’t be sexy and cheeky,” Huber told Vanity Fair.
But none of them scream ‘holidays and hedonism’ quite like Vacation hopes to, and as with other wellbeing categories like fizzy water and gummy vitamin supplements, it’s the selling of a lifestyle experience and an emotiona vibe that really moves a product these days.
As co-collaborator Lach Hall explains, the mission for Vacation is to “really make sunscreen far more than just a chore – something that can actually enhance leisure,” as he told Vanity Fair. If it makes people more inclined to use sunscreen and show off the fact that they’re using it, well that can only be a good thing.
Vacation by Poolside FM is available for pre-order here (U.S only) and launches its full product line-up in June. You can read more at Vanity Fair and Thingtesting.
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WORDS: Disneyrollergirl
IMAGE: Vacation by Poolside FM
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“Even though nightclubs won’t be reopening for a long time and many have closed down permanently, we wanted to assert them as critical cultural spaces, just as much as museums are. We’ve never had so many people ask if we’re having an opening party. People are just desperate to go out and dress up.”
WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGE: Bill Bernstein
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“The one thing you can’t underestimate is how fantastic it looks in a physical shop. In their purest form, nature and plants create wonderful retail theatre. You can buy a dress for the season, then stroll outside to see some wonderful plants. If you’re a lifestyle retailer, not just a pure fashion retailer, there’s an opportunity.” Peter Ruis, president of Canadian lifestyle retailer Indigo and former MD of Anthropologie
The #plantfluencer trend has flourished in just a couple of years, making everyone fancy themselves as a bit of a Monty Don. This Drapers article highlights the opportunity for fashion and lifestyle retailers, with houseplants, garden furniture and associated accessories all there for the taking. Having seen the trend infiltrate stores like H&M and Muji pre-pandemic, the last year has understandably seen a hunger for horticulture. From Gucci’s cottagecore obsession and recent collab with veg grower Gerald Stratford for Highsnobiety, to the new retail concept, Garden by Homebase at Next, which will see Next open Homebase shop-in-shop garden centre concepts at six UK sites, there’s plenty of room for growth.
“This retail trend, let’s call it Garden Zoning, shows how far consumers have come when it comes to sprucing up their gardens during the pandemic,” says DRG retail editor – and garden design enthusiast – Alison Farrington. “Many have tuned in to gardening shows such as BBC2‘s My Perfect Garden for inspiration and to reimagine their outdoor space as a seating area or safe socialising zone in the comfort of their own homes. It’s interesting to see that Homebase is expanding its reach by partnering with Next. The likes of Petersham Nurseries and Anthropologie have led the way for blurred inside-outside living and now there’s clearly demand for wider ranges of outdoor rugs and exterior sofas alongside planters and kitchen herb garden paraphernalia. The addition of ‘outdoor space experts’ on the shop floor indicates a level of commitment to this trend that looks set to continue through 2021 and beyond as consumers are still choosing to stay at home post-pandemic and invest in their own ‘garden rooms’.”
Farrington advises novice gardeners to buy ‘successional plants’, “so you have continuous colour and blooms in your gardens throughout the spring and summer months. And there is much joy from planning a cut-flower bed, which is perhaps why dahlias are back in fashion! My new favourite is the Hilcrest Royal variety.” For small spaces, she recommends windowsills as a good place to start, especially for easy-to-grow herbs such as mint, thyme and parsley, “or even pots for patios, so that you can move them around a small space”. For those alarmed by the latest news on eco-unfriendly compost, just look for the peat-free variety. Or cultivate your own ‘Bulky Organic Matter’ from vegetable or garden waste if you have outdoor space.
Me? I’m very much a novice. We have a low maintenance bonsai (gifted – thanks Shiseido!) and a couple of cacti, although I’m looking forward to Mr DRG planting the chilli and padron pepper seeds I got him from the Royal Horticultural Society website*, which has lots of hand-holding instructions and advice.
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IMAGES:Janneke Luursema / The Planthunter; Loewe; Gucci; Janneke Luursema / The Planthunter
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Welcome to the latest travel retail column for DRG by Alison Farrington aka The Retail Planner (TRP).
This month’s highlights come from a purposeful social retail pop-up in Hainan, a luxury hometail makeover and the latest TikTok trend.
1/ SOCIAL RETAIL. Societal pressures are the focus for a new type of phygital pop-up courtesy of Japanese skincare brand SK-II that has debuted a retail-tainment destination in the Haitang Bay Duty Free Shopping Centre in Sanya, Hainan.
The pop-up is an immersive representation of the P&G-owned brand’s new SK-II Studioanimated anthology series called VS. The film and retail campaign aims to highlight career pressures faced by women and viewed through the experiences of six athletes taking part in this year’s Tokyo Olympics.
The VS series pop-up makes its global debut at the Chinese duty free hotspot. A key attraction is the contactless skin counselling technology, the Mini Magic Scan, that is powered by an AI skin analysis tool and allows visitors to “understand their skin strengths and potential” while they reveal their skin age and receive personalised skincare recommendations.
While customers line up to purchase their SK-II products they can interact with the installation to unlock exclusive WeChat mini programme content designed to engage visitors. This includes an AR experience to take part in a VS kaiju battle alongside the Olympic athletes included in the films.
TRP Takeaway: SK-II has tapped into a powerful pre-Olympics marketing dynamic that raises the issue of social acceptance of success. This is a clever phygital interpretation of pop-up retail and complements the brand’s new VS series to inspire every woman that they have the power to #CHANGEDESTINY.
2/ TIFFANY & CO: ASIA-POP GLOBAL AMBASSADORS.A duo of K-pop and C-pop influencers have taken on global brand ambassador roles for Tiffany & Co as the jeweller invests in the burgeoning hard-luxury market in Asia.
Blackpink’s Rosé (full name Roseanne Park Chae-young) fronts a new ad campaign for the brand’s latest HardWear collection (above). In the new digital campaign, Rosé wears the collection’s chunky 18K gold gauge link necklaces and pavé diamonds. “I love how bold and chic you can look. I’m very interested in layering my necklaces these days,” she tells Vogue.
With more than 70 million followers on Weibo, Yi Yangqianxi, also known as Jackson Yee and as a member of boy band TF Boys is one of C-pop’s biggest stars. Yee has been promoted by Tiffany & Co from regional ambassador in China to a global ambassador role with the hope the Chinese star will cross over to Western markets.
TRP Takeaway: Tiffany & Co’s new parent company LVMH is investing in targeting Gen Z and Millennial digital audiences, especially through an Asia luxury lens.
3/ VIRTUAL VIP CLIENTELING. One silver lining of the pandemic has been luxury retail renovations, while physical stores have been closed. Two of Value Retail’s best known outlet malls, Bicester Village (Oxford, UK) and Fidenza Village (Milan, Italy) have had makeovers to allow customers to make personal shopping appointments at the VIP Apartments and with concierge sales specialists via Zoom or WhatsApp video calls. Interior designer David Thomas redesigned the VIP Apartment spaces into themed rooms, each of which can be used for private events, online or offline. At Fidenza Village, the design brief was: “Imagine [Luchino] Visconti’s [1963 film] ‘The Leopard’ – the art and the art scene. This is the apartment of an eclectic woman who loves collecting art, she travels and brings her collections home and is an avid book reader.”
Value Retail says the result is that the location has maintained “a very strong pool of luxury consumers who would generally be traveling around the world but who were obliged to stay home.” I’m crossing my fingers and booking a flight to Milan.
TRP Takeaway: As VIP ‘clienteling’ gets a tech makeover, it’s clear luxury marketplaces need to play catch up. And with global travel looking more likely to resume in the second half of 2021, destination marketing will play a key role in luring high spending customers, who are used to shopping in a home environment.
4/ TRENDING SCARVES.Headscarves? Yes! For its latest GG Multicolour capsule collection drop, Gucci has jumped on the latest #PleaseDontGo TikTok trend for headscarf wearing (with pets) in cars. I love the humour and adaptability of Gucci’s new digital advertising remit and the luxury brand’s latest TikTok campaign feels more in tune with this community’s way of doing trends than previous efforts, that were rather Gucci-fied.
TRP Takeaway: Luxury brands are flexing their creativity especially for Gen Z digital trends.
PLUS, ICYMI…Vogue Business says the trend for beauty brands such as SK-II to create their own content marks a bigger shift for the ad industry and it points towards purpose marketing…Chinese are flocking to resort island Hainan where thanks to increased duty free allowances, sales are expected to double in 2021 for the second year in a row…Hainan is the location for a new DFS duty free retail complex in Haikou Mission Hills and will be completed in phases over the next two years, eventually spanning over 30,000 sq. m, including the largest beauty hall in DFS’ global store network.
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This post is contributed by DRG retail editor, ALISON FARRINGTON, who is a freelance travel retail industry journalist. Read her previous posts on Disneyrollergirl here.
WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Alison Farrington
IMAGE: Tiffany & Co
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