Birchbox Grows Walgreens Partnership With Holiday Fixtures

For the holiday season, Birchbox will grow its brick-and-mortar partnership with Walgreens by installing Birchbox holiday fixtures in 500 Walgreens stores. This is in addition to the Birchbox boutique-like locations that are now in 11 Walgreens stores. The new holiday fixtures will be in retail locations of the pharmacy chain in 44 states starting this Friday, and through the conclusion of December, Retail Dive reported.

The holiday Birchbox features will be in a “grab-and-go holiday gifts” format at the front of the store with the inclusion of items such as beauty essentials in travel sizes; Birchbox subscription gift cards; an Advent calendar collaboration between Birchbox and Walgreens; and limited-edition Birchbox Grooming and Birchbox Beauty boxes.

The 500 Birchbox holiday fixture locations are temporary for now. Birchbox Chief Operating Officer Pooja Agarwal said per the report that the firm didn’t have any news on whether they will remain in the holiday locations, although they “definitely see potential.” 

The company is also using the locations to promote self-gifting. Customers who buy a gift card for a subscription will take away a box that day. And store associates are now trained on the value proposition of the brand and can provide a more tailored experience to shoppers or answer their questions about the service. 

Last October, reports surfaced that Walgreens was partnering with Birchbox to attract millennials and increase its focus on beauty products. Walgreens was also to take a minority stake in the subscription beauty box company per reports at the time. 

“Beauty is a very important category for Walgreens, and we’ve been doing a huge amount of work to get ourselves ready for a partnership like this to take us to the next step,” Walgreens Group Vice President of Beauty and Personal Care Lauren Brindley said per reports at the time.

The retailer planned to allocate between 400 and 1,000 square feet in brick-and-mortar stores to the concept with the collaboration and enable its shoppers to “build your own Birchbox.”