Lifestyle Retail: More Than Just a Brand

Your office closes at the end of the day, but your brand never does. Your brand, or the impression you make on others and how others perceive you, is what contributes to having clients seek and return to your office. One way to achieve a successful practice is by not only having a large client base but also ensuring that those clients become your advocates. A way to turn a patient into an advocate is to offer a lifestyle brand that embodies shared values and speaks to a person’s lifestyle. An approach to create that lifestyle brand is to offer retail products and merchandise that reflect the lifestyle of your muse clients. And when you do, it can help to support patient satisfaction, improve patient outcomes, provide a competitive advantage, diversify your income, and offer a positive impression of your potential and current clients.

In this article, we share a few ways to curate a lifestyle brand via merchandising and retail products to help reflect the company’s mission and personality.

LIFESTYLE BRANDING

A lifestyle brand emphasizes the experiences and lifestyle of its consumers rather than simply the services or products being offered. In aesthetic medicine, the goal is to offer a meaningful emotional connection, as many great brands do in business.

Your brand highlights the lifestyle that your muse customers aspire to, while also demonstrating how you can help them achieve it via products or services. We offer our clients stylish sun-safe hats that are so chic, they pass not only the skin-protective test but also the style test. A recent study has shown that 86% of consumers claimed that authenticity is important when deciding which brands they support.¹ We tell our patients that every hat offered at the practice was tried and tested, hand-picked, and derm-approved in both style and protective functionality. We had this in mind: “You don’t have to compromise elegance and style to protect your skin,” and offering chic sun-protective hat accessories helped us to tell this story about what is unique about the practice.

ENHANCED SATISFACTION, IMPROVED OUTCOMES

If your practice recommends collaborative aesthetic medicine, carry products that align with this philosophy. Offering supplements not only enhances patient outcomes but also adds convenience by saving them an extra shopping trip. We operate under a simple business principle: If you recommend it to your client, you need to sell it in the practice. Therefore, if you recommend a probiotic, magnesium, or vitamin D supplement, ensure your office carries the product in your inventory. When you do, you offer convenience to your patient, income to your practice, and assurance that it is exactly the right supplement and protocol for your client.

In addition to supplements and the expected medical-grade skincare, consider bringing on medical-grade makeup. When you offer skin-safe makeup products, you can be confident that your patients’ beauty choices are good and safe for their skin, and generally improve downtime. Offering accessible and high-quality beauty products leads to increased patient satisfaction, income for your practice, and assurance that their post-care is optimized.

We work with our patients to help them age well, both inside and out. Living well, feeling good, and looking good are all tied to sufficient sleep. That’s why we’re introducing the “Sleep Well Kit,” which includes a Silk® pillowcase, an eye mask, an essential sleep scented mist, and a magnesium tonic powder to support positive sleep habits. The Sleep Well kit supports patient outcomes, diversifies income, and of course, shows our personality and stance on aging—from the inside and out.

PATIENT LOYALTY

Retail often paves the way for a lasting relationship between patients and the practice. According to a NewBeauty survey, skin care products are typically purchased three to five times per year.² Each of these visits provides a chance to introduce patients to additional services they might find appealing. Ultimately, offering diverse retail products helps to increase the lifetime value and visits of a patient to your great practice.

To maintain patient engagement and simplify the purchasing process, practices should facilitate easy access to products; in the world of technology, that means 24/7 availability. Our office utilizes an e-commerce platform, allowing us to benefit from skin care sales even when the office is closed. According to McKinsey, approximately 22% of global beauty retail sales will occur online this year.³ While in-person sales continue to outpace e-commerce, online sales are on the rise. In addition to products, our practice offers several treatments that are available for purchase online 24/7. This is how we bring our patients convenience even when the office is closed.

BRAND DIFFERENTIATION & DIVERSIFICATION

Retail products will increase a practice’s revenue. At our practice, retail sales contribute 11% of total revenue, highlighting their importance in both supporting financial stability and offering patients a comprehensive skincare approach. The products your practice offers are meant to differentiate your brand and consider your muse clients. As one example, we noticed many of our clients enjoy coffee-table books either for their home décor or reading, and so we decided to make our own. The Book of Skin is an oversized, Assouline-inspired, coffee-table book that includes high-resolution photographs of skin and celebrates healthy skin and easy lifestyle tricks, all curated by Dr. Kim Nichols. This is one way we have differentiated the brand, taking consideration of our muse clients who appreciate this unique offering as a dermatology practice.

CONCLUSION

Overall, incorporating lifestyle retail items can significantly enhance the value you provide to clients, create additional revenue opportunities, and strengthen the client-practice relationship. By aligning your products with clients’ lifestyles and needs, you not only enrich their experience but also foster greater loyalty and satisfaction, ultimately benefiting both the client and your practice.

1. Stackla. Post-Pandemic Shifts in Consumer Shopping Habits: Authenticity, Personalization and the Power of UGC. Nosto. Published 2021. Accessed September 3, 2024. https://www.nosto.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Stackla-Post-Pandemic-Shifts-in-Consumer-Shopping-Habits-Data-Report_FINAL_compressed.pdf

2. Bido T. NewBeauty’s ‘State of Aesthetics’ Report: Insights into Evolving Attitudes Towards Cosmetic Surgery and Skin Care. NewBeauty. Published August 9, 2023. Accessed September 3, 2024. www.newbeauty.com/state-of-aesthetics-report-2023/.

3. Diversifying the Beauty Market. McKinsey & Company. Published June 27, 2023. Accessed September 3, 2024. www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/sustainable-inclusive-growth/chart-of-the-day/diversifying-the-beauty-market.