The Korean Beauty Maven Behind Peach & Lily Just Set Up Her First IRL Store

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The Korean beauty e-commerce destination Peach & Lily just opened its first store on November 25th inside the Macy's in Flushing, Queens. (Does the name sound familiar? They're the ones who hosted that awesome sample sale over the summer.) Founder Alicia Yoon established her site, where costumers shop high-end and emerging Korean skincare brands, as an educational too, and she's aiming to enhance that online experience in the first IRL store for the skincare-obsessed. Why Flushing? Peach & Lily's market research showed that the neighborhood demographic set the highest bar in New York for obsessive skincare knowledge.

Unlike other Macy's locations in the five boroughs, Flushing isn't touristy. The people who shop here typically live close by, and that works for a business whose original online model was built on return customers. "I wanted to make sure our first store within Macy's was in a place where people are serious about skincare and have a desire to work on achieving the healthiest skin that they can have, versus just desiring makeup to cover everything up," said Yoon.

Yoon is fanatical about skincare and travels to Korea every six weeks for "beauty hunting;" out of every 100 skincare products that Peach & Lily vets, only five make the cut. The store employs a full-time team of beauty experts to consult with and respond to customers' skincare issues and walk newer customers through Korean beauty rituals (for example, double cleansing — first with an oil-based solution and then water-based on — is standard procedure in the realm of Korean skincare). Peach & Lily also utilizes a skincare analysis device that takes photos of customer's skin for even more accountable advice.

The store is organized by steps in the routine, not by brand. "When you're thinking about what you want to do for your beauty ritual, you're not really loyal to brand anymore — you're brand-agnostic." said Yoon. "You just want something that works for you. You want the best of everything, as long as they work well together."

With products and processes that specific, the compact 150-square-foot shop-in-shop had to look just right. John Rawlins, who designed the shoe salon at Bergdorf Goodman, planned for the Peach & Lily store to stand out on the Macy's cosmetics floor that features high-end brand counters likes SK-II and La Mer within a generic commercial design. Thus, the store is pink, rose gold, and white, and honors the clean, glamorous look of the Peach & Lily site.

Yoon's vision for a skin-savvier New York isn't all about attacking weaknesses — she wants customers to know their strengths, too. "You want to know, ‘Hey, my radiance is great!' And we're training our team to help people know that," said Yoon.