Monday, August 4, 2008
Last week I went to both Sephora and Bath & Body Works, both are places I love to visit!
Sephora:
I went to Sephora at "The Mall at Short Hills," which is unusually snooty so it's hardly fair to compare this store with Bath & Body Works, but it's still fun to browse there.
The first item to note is that the store is practically bursting at the seams with products and promotions and the interior of the store is pushed to its limit. It's very confusing and overwhelming. Upon arrival, I was "greeted" by a floor person and seemingly reluctantly asked if they could help.
I wandered the store a bit trying on this and washing it off with semi-conveniently placed tissues and such. Passed to the back where the hair and skin products are located and tried on a Fresh soy facial cleanser. Nice, but still too expensive... a nicer salewoman asked if I was a member of their "rewards" program. I thought I was but I don't buy enough stuff to make it worth my while and extra emails that clog my various email "inboxes."
The lighting is quite bright unforgiving. I guess to give you a better of the product, however sometimes lower light is better. I like that in the checkout line there are a lot fun samples. They're from top brands, too, not just Sephora's own brands, so they're still pretty expensive.
I left without buying anything and there was nothing that I absolutely had to have...for now.
Bath & Body Works:
After an interview with a recruiter, I went to Woodbridge Mall for a stroll. At the mall, they have an expanded Bath & Body Works that not only stocks its own brand, but others as well, such as Patricia Wexler, Frederic Fekkai, C.O. Bigelow, Mustela, Phyto, Caudalie, and many more. This has been something B & BW has done for a relatively short time and not all of their stores have all of these brands, but they can be purchased through their web site. Most of their stores have been redecorated to be less cute and many have cleaner lines and product displays.
The atmosphere was much different: the lights weren't as bright, there was actually places to walk around the shelves and there was a working sink available if you had too much product on and needed to wash it off. Immediately, I headed over to the trial size racks and searched for good stuff.
In previous posts, I've noted that many of B&BW's private label products are overly scented and make me sneeze. I stay away from their signature products and scents and steer toward the more natural scents featured in their Aromatherapy line.
Products were arranged by brand if it was a nonB&BW brand. There were two makeup sets available to try on but no salepeople were really around to help and no one really greeted me even though I was nearly the only person in the store.
I ended up purchasing one bottle of the Aromatherapy liquid hand soaps for our basement bathroom. It was only $6 for 12 ozs. A nice price. There's a promotion going on where you can get 3 products from this line for $15 or 7 products for $20. Makes me hope they're not discontinuing this line. It seems to good to be true, but I only purchased one in Tranquil Mint/Stress Reliever. A very nice scent.
I did a little more browsing and ended up with a small container of hand sanitizer also for the bathroom for $1.50. The person who checked me out made sure to ask if I was sure I didn't need more; I was sure.
Overall a much nicer experience.
Conclusion:
I like these stores for different reasons, but I'm more likely to make more regular purchases at B&BW, especially of their non-private label signature line products. I also like the C.O. Bigelow products and Patricia Wexler lines.
None of the sales people were overly friendly. So I told the Sephora woman that I was just looking, but even so there were a lot of people just hanging around doing seemingly nothing.
I love makeovers and would have liked to have been approached for one especially since they weren't too busy. I wanted to ask someone at Sephora for a sample of the Fresh facial cleanser, but felt shy.
Overall, I'd give the award to B&BW for their friendlier atmosphere, not as cluttered look, and more items that I would actually buy regularly. If only there was one with all of the brands closer to me I'd love it.
Update: Some of the aromatherapy scents make me sneeze!! :(
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