“We had big dreams of revolutionizing the beauty experience of customers,” said Jo Horgan, co-chief executive officer and founder of Mecca, the Australian beauty seller that launched in Melbourne in 1997.
Fast-forward to today, and that dream has become reality. Mecca is a 110-door retail powerhouse, readying to open its second flagship, which will measure 40,000 square feet, in Melbourne early next year and be one of the largest beauty stores in the world.
The retailer’s beauty community is 5 million people strong, and it has harnessed 25 percent market share.
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“We’re in the entertainment business,” said Horgan. “It’s our job to make customers feel amazing every single time they shop with us. That’s always been our north star, to make customers look and — more importantly, feel — their absolute best. To do this we always try to push the boundaries and find ways to break new ground.”
While the market continuously morphs at lightning speed, Mecca has kept pace — and experienced massive growth. It’s 2.5 times larger today sales-wise than at the end of 2019.
When Mecca was founded 25 years ago, the Australian market had two department stores and pharmacies, and it wasn’t highly customer-centric. The retailers and biggest heritage beauty brands had most control.
“We wanted customers to be in control, by introducing new niche beauty brands to the market, merchandising them in a brand-agnostic way, in a boutique store they actually want to live in,” said Horgan.
It was important customers had a brilliant time with their new beauty bestie, aka a Mecca host.
To deliver every time, some key things were kept in mind: having an incredible brand lineup and a unique brand-building model, according to Horgan.
“We don’t just retail products for our brands. We’re actually responsible for building brand equity and sales in equal measure, as a local affiliate would be,” she said. “This usually leads to higher sales and awareness rankings in Australia versus other international markets.”
A second key is that Mecca in-store teams don’t just transact sales.
“They are deep beauty experts,” said Horgan. “And they’re masters at sharing this information in a really engaging and fun way.”
Mecca spends 4 percent of its annual turnover on education and engagement. In 2023, Meccaversity will carry out 500,000 hours of online and in-person education, from product basics to life skills.
“Thirdly, we offer high service, even in a self-service environment,” said Horgan.
To ensure that’s possible, Mecca measures its host-to-customer ratio each week by store. The retailer spends more than 20 percent of its annual turnover on in-store team members.
“We’re now also extending this thinking to our online customer happiness team,” said Horgan.
As a result, a customer satisfaction index applied to each different customer experience is consistently in the high 70s.
“But Mecca’s goal is actually to hit and stay above 80,” said Horgan. “The whole business — every single person — is KPIed [key performance indicator] on that one metric.”
So what else is Mecca doing to try and remain ahead of its super-informed customers, offering what they want before they even know they want it? Horgan asked.
Mecca, born in bricks-and-mortar, remains a huge believer in the in-store experience — so much so that it is increasing its IRL footprint by 70 percent over the next three years.
“We believe that the physical experience of beauty, the human touch, is more important than it’s ever been,” said Horgan, adding offering a seamless digital experience is a must, too. “Our goal is to make beauty more interactive, more service-oriented.
“The melting pot for reimaging what the beauty store experience can be is our flagships,” she continued.
The Sydney flagship, which opened in November 2020, is spread on three levels and has 200 team members. It’s 20 times bigger than Mecca’s first location and counts more than 150 new elements and experiments.
“It’s the culmination of everything that we learned in the 100 stores that we had opened to date,” said Horgan.
The Sydney store today boasts the highest sales of any beauty store or floor in Australia.
“But much more excitingly for us, it’s actually surpassed the sales per square meter average that we have across all our other much-smaller stores,” she said. “Both the store traffic and the sales are continuing to grow a lot.”
That gave confidence for the upcoming flagship, which is 40 times bigger than Mecca’s first door.
“So by definition, it’s going to need to be filled with new and exciting things,” said Horgan.
The makeup area will be big and theatrical. “Imagine carrousel-style beauty bars, a beauty lab, a 14-chair beauty studio, plus beauty brow services,” said Horgan.
Skin care will range from quick-and-easy consults through to injectables, high-performance skin labs and semi-private skin beds offering 30-minute booster shots. There are to be dermal skin care service rooms, too.
Fragrance will be front and center, with its own fragrance bars, a master class installation and a make-your-own offer.
Newness features in its own space. Mecca’s apothecary will have about 20 new wellness brands, plus naturopath consults, acupuncture and IV infusions, among other services.
There’s also to be a hair salon and a high-end nail offer, plus other elevated services in a loft-like space. A Champagne bar allows for bubbly while one’s being beautified. Meanwhile, Meccaversity will have 4,000 square feet of auditoriums and practical labs. Gifting will have its own mezzanine, wrapping, engravers and calligraphers.
“What we like here will then be spread through the rest of the stores,” said Horgan, adding all of the newness might not land, however.
“The Mecca team have real agency to try new things that sometimes will fail, which is fine — as long as we fail fast, fail forward, learn from our mistakes and keep on going,” she explained. “In fact, if we don’t fail on occasion, we think it’s because we’re not being bold enough. And it’s this philosophy of considered risk-taking that’s allowed us to get to where we got to today.”
Mecca breaks down new concepts and ideas, trying them out on a small scale and making incremental changes before putting them into flagships.
“The good news is that we can actually mix anything before we get to launch,” said Horgan.
After testing myriad services in an ephemeral shopping center location, for instance, it became clear that there is Mecca customer demand for dermal skin care. So based on this and the size of the market for such services in Australia, Mecca is implementing in its Melbourne flagship a seven-suite dermal skin clinic, called Mecca Aesthetica, offering LED, laser, microderm, injectables and more.
“We now think Mecca Aesthetica can be a stand-alone concept in and of itself,” said Horgan.
Mecca applies the same thinking to digital to help offer consumers a seamless omnichannel experience. It accelerated its online strategy, spending $50 million on digital over the last three years and more than doubling its related tech team.
“The investment is paying off,” said Horgan. “Our online business has tripled since 2019.”
Online sales have maintained double-digit growth annually on the site bosting 65 million customers, which will be relaunched in the middle of this year.
“The test-and-trial mentality we have is our winning formula to allow us to incrementally and continually try to stay ahead of our customer,” said Horgan. “That’s our holy grail.”