Cos Bar is expanding its presence in New York City.
The luxury beauty specialty retailer is opening its second Big Apple location on Thursday in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood at a space previously occupied by beauty boutique Shen Beauty. Shen ceased operations last month after closing its doors and pivoting to e-commerce in the summer.
Cos Bar had been scouting locations in the Brooklyn enclaves Williamsburg and Cobble Hill as far back as 2018 before pouncing on Shen’s former outpost. “I had other stakeholders that felt it was still a little too hipster and not quite yet ready for a Cos Bar,” says CEO Oliver Garfield. “I like to think I’ve been proven correct because, had we gotten into some of the great real estate in Williamsburg before rents went sky high, it would’ve been a very successful store.”
Cos Bar has been busy renovating the Cobble Hill store. It will feature additional fixtures and extended counter space to accommodate a wider assortment of brands and products than Shen had stocked. The renovations also include changes to the space’s color and material palette, although Shen’s original plywood finish will remain intact. Garfield says that the location won’t do away with all the elements of Shen, a staple of the area that inspired loyalists.
Cos Bar’s Brooklyn location will mark the retailer’s 21st store. Its store fleet extends to New York, Colorado, California, New Jersey, Minnesota, Texas, Hawaii, New Mexico and Arizona. The retailer, which is backed by private equity firm Tengram Capital Partners, last opened a store in Houston in November 2022. Cos Bar opened its first New York location in 2014 at Brookfield Place, a posh indoor shopping mall in lower Manhattan that houses Clean Market, Drybar, Gucci, Lululemon and Louis Vuitton.
Garfield predicts Cos Bar’s customer base in Brooklyn will be similar to the customer base Shen attracted. “They want to avoid going into Manhattan and avoid Midtown more than anything, that’s just not their thing,” he says. “But that customer still wants to walk in a store, get good service, be guided through all the choices that’s out there and see, feel and touch beauty, which you can only do in person.”
Cos Bar Brooklyn is expected to debut with approximately 50 beauty brands across skincare, makeup, fragrance and haircare. Augustinus Bader, Dr. Barbara Sturm, Westman Atelier, Sisley Paris, Cle De Peau, Hourglass, La Mer, 111 Skin, Creed, Byredo, Parfums De Marly and Oribe are a few of the brands that will be stocked on its shelves. Garfield says the retailer took a “best-of-the-best” approach to merchandise curation for the store by selecting its top-performing brands and products. The assortment could become more localized in the future.
Garfield says, “There are other brands that we’ve been looking at that we may bring into the assortment with that Brooklyn customer in mind, but I think we want to see who she is exactly and what she’s looking at.”
Garfield is taking a wait-and-see approach to the store’s physical configuration, too. Mirroring Shen’s prior layout, Cos Bar’s Brooklyn store encompasses about 900 square feet of retail space at the front and four treatment rooms in the back. Shen had offered in-store services such as facials, massages and beauty treatments. At the outset of its Brooklyn location, Cos Bar won’t be providing services.
“We have two options,” explains Garfield. “We see how the business gets going and see if we need to take more retail square footage. The other option is that we try to go after a robust four-room service business and do something new and different.”
Beauty services would be a relatively unique business endeavor for Cos Bar. Known for its concierge-style in-store customer service, the retailer offers facial treatments in two of its 21 locations. Garfield theorizes that Brooklyn may be an effective market to develop a service menu and lists traditional European facials, waxing and brow services as some of the treatments it may offer in the future.
After notching low double-digit comparable sales growth during 2021 and 2022, Cos Bar’s 2023 sales are forecast to increase by a high single-digit percentage. Eighty percent of the retailer’s sales volume is done through about 20% of its top-performing brands like Augustinus Bader, Westman Atelier, La Prairie, Cle De Peau and Chantecaille. However, niche and luxury fragrances such as Maison Francis Kurkdjian and Parfums De Marly are experiencing heightened demand in Cos Bar stores as are giftable bath and body products.
Looking ahead, Garfield anticipates enlarging Cos Bar’s store network with a couple more doors next year and is fielding enthusiastic inbound requests from people leasing retail real estate. “We’re pretty in demand. If you’re a luxury brand now, what’s your wholesale strategy? There are department stores, but they’re dealing with a bunch of headwinds,” he says. “That’s not where the energy is right now. As developers and landlords are looking for that beauty retailer to fill that category, we’re it.”
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