Ur beautiful

RETAIL THERAPIES

UR Beautiful is bringing the luxury brands and services of Harrods’ Urban Retreat to the high street. Annette Hanford reports

With retail sales so important to a salon’s bottom line, finding premium beauty brands on sale in the local Boots store is not, on first impressions, a good thing. Unless, that is, you happen to live in Kingston-Upon-Thames, in Surrey, where a new salon concept aims to offer a host of professional beauty services within a traditional retail environment. UR BEAUTIFUL ENTRANCE UR Beautiful – a diffusion of George Hammer’s Urban Retreat brand – is a new concession within the chemist store, offering clients (and shoppers) an array of hair and beauty services, along with a wide selection of professional retail products. Inspired by the Urban Retreat in London’s Harrods, UR Beautiful occupies 5,000sq ft across the store’s first floor, and features eight spacious treatment rooms, eight hairdressing stations, four manicure stations, and four pedicure thrones – complete with integral footbath and massage functions. DANIEL SANDLER MAKE-UP Prestigious products and treatments are from skincare houses, including Dr Murad, Darphin, Thalgo, Guam, Guinot and Temple Spa, plus signature treatments formulated by the Urban Retreat’s British beauty experts (see panel). TREATMENT MENU The wide range of treatments includes: prescriptive facials with male specific options; cellulite and body contouring wraps and treatments; manicures, nail extensions; chiropody and pedicures; massage; and maternity treatments. Additional services include airbrush tanning, hair removal, make-up lessons, and eyebrow threading. PEDICURE THRONES The salon also houses its own medi-spa that aims to identify the most appropriate treatments and products for clients, using digital skin analysis combined with nutritional profiling. Lip enhancements, injectibles, and filler procedures are also on the menu, as is micro-dermabrasion, colonic hydrotherapy and sclerotherapy.

George has pooled the beauty professionals he has worked alongside at the Urban Retreat to form a “super group” of experts, comprising: Daniel Sandler (cosmetics); Roja Dove (perfumes); Anastasia Achilleos (skincare); Joanne King (bodycare); Leighton Denny (nails); Margaret Dabbs (medi-pedi); Shavata Singh (eyebrows); and Jo Heptinstall (cellulite). Their collective knowledge has been used to create the Urban Retreat product line and signature treatments.

"UR BEAUTIFUL" -- ACCORDING TO GEORGE HAMMER GEORGE HAMMER Q: What was the thinking behind the UR Beautiful concept? From Harrods to the high street – why? A: “UR Beautiful is a concession in a Boots store, a diffusion of the Urban Retreat beauty destination at Harrods – premium, professional beauty services at high-street prices, so something that is available to all. The salon offers beauty services such as facials, manicures, brow shaping, body treatments and make-up lessons, as well as a full range of hair services. “We’ve gone down this route to reach more people. All the big fashion couture houses have diffusion lines – Georgio Armani, Donna Karan, etc – and that’s what UR Beautiful is: a diffusion of Urban Retreat. Urban Retreat is Harrods and expensive, while UR Beautiful is high street and affordable.” Q: Why Boots, and why Kingston-upon-Thames? A: “As Boots captures a wide audience of beauty-conscious women, it was the obvious partner. Consumers trust Boots, so it makes perfect sense to partner with such a trusted brand. And for premium beauty retailing, Boots is the number one retailer. “Kingston was chosen since it’s close enough to London for us to monitor it closely, and it’s easily accessible without being in central London itself.” UR BEAUTIFUL CAN BE ACCESSED VIA THE STORE OR A PRIVATE ENTRANCE Q: How did the partnership with Boots come about? A: “They approached us and we spent six months discussing and refining the concept.” Q: Do you plan to roll the concept out in other (Boots) locations? A: “We need to understand the high-street customer before we think about rolling out more UR Beautifuls – and that could take anything from six to 12 months. When we have this understanding, we can start thinking about other sites. However, we do have 15 sites earmarked as potential UR Beautiful sites.” Q: You’ve also launched an Urban Retreat product range A: “It was through my interest in supporting the best in British beauty that I hit upon the idea of bringing together the existing talent of select individuals, already working at Urban Retreat in Harrods, to create the British Beauty Experts group, each of whom would create a capsule collection of products within their own area of expertise. “We are extremely fortunate to have long-standing and mutually respectful relationships with beauty experts at the forefront of the industry, so who better to collaborate with to create our signature range of Urban Retreat beauty products? The line will be a reflection of the knowledge and expertise that these experts have built up over the years.” Q: How do the professional and premium skincare brands sit alongside lower-cost ‘consumer’ brands? A: “They fit really well as they are separated from each other. UR Beautiful is almost like a different department within Boots. It’s a different area, but still visible and accessible from the main shopping area.” Q: What was your main priority with this new concept? A: “To provide quality services and good retail brands for people at an affordable price. Very few people have experienced a good-quality facial or professional beauty treatment. The extent of most women’s experience with beauty treatments has been express, on-counter beauty treatments that are redeemable against purchase. This is not necessarily a true beauty experience – what we aim to offer is professional services with consistent quality at an affordable price.” Q: What makes UR Beautiful different to regular high street salons? A: “UR Beautiful is a diffusion brand of Urban Retreat and is inspired by fashion labels such as Marc by Marc Jacobs, DKNY and Emporio Armani. UR Beautiful is aimed at a discerning clientele that aspires to the luxury of Urban Retreat and the quality it represents. The staff in the new salon are Urban Retreat-trained – receiving the same training as staff based in Harrods. Clients are therefore getting a premium service and premium treatments at a high-street price.” “We also have a large menu of treatments, with everything from hair cutting to colonic irrigation, a cellulite clinic, treatments for pregnant women, a wig boudoir, and make-up lessons – we offer the customers a large variety of choice, a premium quality, and consistent service at an affordable price point.” Q: Are you looking to change the face of the high street and the public’s view of visiting a salon for professional treatments and brands? A: “We don’t want to change views but simply bring consistency and create benchmarks that others aspire to.”