MILAN – Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Beauty brand is expanding in Italy.

After Goop’s restructuring aimed at focusing on three growth pillars of fashion, beauty and food last year, its beauty business is officially launching in the Italian market on Thursday via an exclusive deal, for at least a year, with local niche retailer The Beautyaholic’s Shop.

Launched in 2011 as an online platform and flanked by a brick-and-mortar location in Rome since 2016, the retailer founded by Paola Malaspina has built a cult, IYKYK-kind of following for its pioneering role in bringing a curated selection of high-end clean beauty brands in the country and Malaspina’s talent in scouting indie names.

Goop Beauty’s addition was a no-brainer. “We’ve been talking with them for quite some time. We were already the first to launch Juice Beauty here in 2017,” Malaspina told WWD, referencing the time Paltrow served as creative director of makeup for the brand, appointed in 2015 after she invested in the company the previous year. As reported last month, Juice Beauty, which was founded in 2005 by Karen Behnke and among the first ones to capitalize on organic beauty and all things clean, is set to liquidate its assets.

“Maybe Juice Beauty was a little simpler in formulations, while Goop Beauty is evolving significantly under that aspect. And we have evolved as well in all things clean and especially in performance,” continued Malaspina about the affinities between the brand and her company.

“We’ve been attuned in philosophy ever since, in terms of lifestyle and this [holistic] approach to beauty,” she said, underscoring how Goop Beauty only recently kicked off its international expansion, “so we waited a little bit for them.” To be sure, the Italian launch is part of a bigger push that saw Goop Beauty hit the shelves of Oh My Cream locations in Europe.

Paltrow’s label is to enrich The Beautyaholic’s Shop’s assortment of about 40 brands, which range from the likes of Augustinus Bader, Noble Panacea and Tata Harper Skincare to May Lindstrom Skin, Corpus Naturals, Raaie and Le Rub, to name a few. Goop Beauty’s debut will be closely followed by the addition of the Victoria Beckham Beauty range starting May 19 as well.

“The approach in this case was different. It’s a completely different brand — it comes from fashion and moves as a fashion company. They don’t have a commercial [mentality] as a beauty one,” said Malaspina about the operation that was three years in the making.

“They first launched beauty at their boutiques, then in some department stores and now there’s a very selective journey to secure them. They are going for independent perfumeries,” she said.

According to Malaspina, both brands’ strategy of betting on the niche route rather than big chains operating locally hinges on their prioritizing an effective customer experience and ensuring their storytelling is delivered in the right way.

“Department stores might offer way more traffic, but 90 percent of those visitors are not interested in this kind of brand or simply there’s no time to efficiently narrate what lies behind a product,” said Malaspina. “In niche stores like ours there’s a completely different attention to customers, in addition to a very curated selection of labels.”

In the case of Malaspina’s own company, she acknowledged her secret weapon to be integrity. She started her venture with a strict focus on beauty brands that had a clean and green ethos, but also ensuring a high performance. 

“Along the road, we realized that some of the brands weren’t that strong in the latter, so we let them go and replaced them,” she said. “And we could do that because we’re independent. We can curate a selection in an ethical way… We may never make big money, as we carry only brands that fully convince us and not those that come with a higher margin of profit or want to take over our store’s window, but that kind of credibility is strongly perceived by both customers and brands.”

Malaspina is mindful when building assortments, too. For one, in the case of Goop Beauty, she focused more on bringing the skin care and body care products — like the 3x Retinol Regenerative Serum and Eye Lift Serum — to the store’s shelves first, also to avoid overlaps in the makeup category with the likes of Victoria Beckham Beauty and Westman Atelier.

Even within the makeup segment, she underscored the differences between the two aforementioned brands. She enthused about the former’s luxe take on makeup and “glamourous payoff” and highlighted the functional approach of the latter.

The founder was particularly proud of having secured Victoria Beckham Beauty’s full assortment, including its collaboration with Augustinus Bader — already one of the bestselling brands at her store. To be sure, The Beautyaholic’s Shop frequently has the exclusive on launches and special products by Augustinus Bader, so Malaspina sees this as a “full-circle moment.”

Coming with Beckham’s line are also its successful fragrances — a category Malaspina has recently deep-dived into with the addition of brands like Flora Danica and Marie Jeanne, and looking to exploring more going forward.

“It’s extremely difficult to find fragrances in sync with our philosophy. I would love to expand in this segment — especially looking at its overall booming sales and growth rates — but coherency is everything also in this case and we can’t just add brands that don’t respect our philosophy,” she said.

Another future driver might come from supplements, which the founder sees as a natural extension of her offering in sync with the store’s holistic approach to beauty. She revealed plans to expand in the category were already in the pipeline last year but due to local bureaucracy woes and delays in the issuing of permits needed to sell the category, they have been postponed to next year.

Malaspina additionally eyes the optimization of in-store services. The retailer is already known for hosting masterclasses and events with brands’ founders — which further contribute to engage customers — but the goal is to implement also a permanent corner for facials and beauty treatments.

“It’s part of a bigger strategy,” said Malaspina. “Being independent is beautiful, but every step you take comes with a challenge,” she said, addressing how she’s considering to welcome investors to support her plans. “I want to keep my integrity but I’m also [disappointed] I can’t develop what I have in mind,” said Malaspina, pointing to the opening of other brick-and-mortar locations as per her clients’ demands.

A five-minute walk from Rome’s landmark Spanish Steps, the physical outpost of The Beautyaholic’s Shop followed pilot projects across Italy and flanks the online store shipping across Europe. While the e-commerce has always been the main channel, Malaspina said that sales generated at the brick-and-mortar store had been growing double-digit every year since COVID-19 and exceeded the ones generated online last year.

Without disclosing specific sales figures, Malaspina said that the average ticket sales has increased online. Overall, skin care remains the key driver but “makeup also sells by itself.” Brand-wise, she mentioned the likes of Augustinus Bader, Dr. Barbara Sturm and Westman Atelier among the most popular choices, as well as new additions like German brand Auteur.

As the retailer has evolved more and more in terms of exclusivity and higher positioning, the target evolved, as well. If skin care has always attracted a sophisticated, mature clientele with higher spending capacity, the introduction of makeup enabled the store to engage with knowledgeable younger customers, expanding the core customer base, now aged 35 to 55, with 30 percent made of international consumers.

A former manager in a telecommunication company, Malaspina has always been passionate about skin care and keen in discovering beauty brands during her travels around the world. After earning an MBA, she launched The Beautyaholic’s Shop to bring such labels to the Italian market and with the mission to educate local beauty aficionados on clean labels and formulations.