Gwyneth Paltrow Opens New Goop Store With Beauty Salon

Goop is opening a new store in the San Francisco Bay Area on Friday at the Marin Country Mart in Larkspur, Calif. It’s the company’s sixth retail location.

For the first time, the company will launch an in-store treatment room. It was “a pipe dream” for founder Gwyneth Paltrow to open “an experiential facial treatment room,” said Matthew Blythe, senior director of retail operations and development at Goop.

“From the beginning, when we designed the store, we incorporated this concept into the layout,” he continued. “We’ve never done anything like this before. We’ve had fashion shows where we’ve done some facials in the store, but this is a completely new concept.”

The store opens Friday, but the treatment room will open at a later date to be determined, with registration available online or in-store.

“That’s something we’re working on to make sure we’re making the right choice: having a specialized esthetician that we can offer, an experience that goes even further in educating the client and also allows them to have an incredible time in the space,” Blythe added.

Orange County-based design firm ViaClover designed the 120-square-metre space with checkered tiles and Vienna oak floors. It features neutral tones and organic textures, showcasing a light installation by Melbourne-based studio Volker Haug.

“She was looking for pre-war New York apartments mixed with vintage French cafes,” Blythe said of Paltrow’s design direction.

Before investing in permanent stores, Goop first tested different markets with pop-up experiences before opening its first physical store in 2017 in Brentwood, a quiet and upscale neighborhood in Los Angeles. The company has since opened a store every year; in 2018, it opened in Sag Harbor, New York, then in Santa Barbara inside the Rosewood Miramar Beach, followed by Mauna Lani, Hawaii, and Bond Street, New York in 2021.

“When I joined the company, our five retail stores were doing very well,” said Blythe, who joined the company in 2022 after working at Outerknown and nine years at Ralph Lauren. “They had the opportunity to do even better. From 2022 to 2023, they grew about 20% (in comparable sales) and they continue to grow double-digit year-over-year.”

Year-to-date, retail sales have increased 19% through 2023, according to Goop, which expects the trend to continue with the new store opening. Its consumers are known to be highly engaged and affluent, with the majority having an average household income of $125,000.

Private label brands Goop Beauty and G. Label are particularly popular. The new store will feature an assortment of both brands, as well as fine jewelry, home goods and wellness products. Artwork by Fromental designed in collaboration with Paltrow is also available for purchase in the store.

“I really make sure that the stores that we have now continue to grow and be optimized,” Blythe said. “Then I focus on our expansion strategy, the markets that we want to go into, which is kind of focused on community interaction. So you have to have a real reason for being in that market and really be connected to the heart of that community.”

There are plans to open up to 20 Goop stores, he added: “One to three stores a year is a very good growth strategy.”

Where to go next?

“Greenwich has always been in my plans,” he said of possible future locations for the stores. “Palm Beach, Aspen, even parts of Texas. There are some incredible places to shop there. Those four places are probably the ones that I think are the most interesting and obvious for us.”