The newest addition to luxury retailer Fred Segal is a vending machine. But it doesn’t sell sodas and chips.
Instead, it’s stocked with 50 different high-end beauty products, including mascara by Lancome, lip balm by C.O. Bigelow and body butter by Bliss.
Fred Segal’s Santa Monica location is the first retailer to house the automated machine, called Utique Shop. The items are priced from $5 for clear adhesive bandages to $160 for mink eyelashes and $179 for a detox kit of diet supplements.
Mara Segal, a 29-year-old former brand and trend consultant for Dove, Absolut and PepsiCo., launched San Francisco-based Utique Shop last year.
Segal said she came up with the idea for the machine after doing consumer research and finding that people wanted to be able to purchase items quickly, without having to wait on a sales associate.
“The objective was to create a solution for life’s little emergencies and indulgences items people need on the go,” said Segal, not related to store founder Fred Segal.
Utique Shop is in the store’s Studio Beauty Mix section, where customers can purchase cosmetics, skin care, fragrances and hair products. The machine has colorful lights and a robotic arm that dispenses products. Certain items can be sampled before purchase. A screen on the machine allows shoppers to read more about an item or watch a video about the product.
Retail consultant Janine Blaine said that this could be a new way to offer cosmetics and other retail items. But there may be some consumer resistance; some people will still need the interaction of a clerk.
“It will only work for certain commodities, where the consumer doesn’t need to try, touch and smell,” said Blaine, vice president of downtown L.A. retail consulting company Directives West.
Although vending machines have been used in new ways over the past few years Macy’s began installing machines that sell iPods in its stores in 2006 it’s not a widespread phenomenon in the retail world yet.
But Mara Segal hopes to launch Utique Shops at high-end gyms, hotels, airports and transit terminal stations across the United States by the end of the year.
