In a bid to further establish its digital presence in Asia following the April 2014 launch of its Shanghai flagship, British luxury fashion house Burberry is expanding its Beauty Box concept to South Korea’s capital, Seoul. The high-tech beauty retail format was first debuted in London last year.

Based in Coex Shopping Mall in Seoul’s upmarket Gangnam district, the Beauty Box store offers Burberry’s make-up products, fragrances and accessories for men and women. Crucially, it also boasts a wealth of interactive digital features conceived to entice the city’s famously tech-savvy audience. More than 78% of South Koreans use smartphones, rising to more than 80% in the teen age bracket – a key pool of future consumers to which the Beauty Box spin-off is aligned.

Key features include a digital Lip & Nail Bar that allows shoppers to virtually try on polishes and lipsticks. Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags integrated into packaging activate a ‘virtual mirror’ as soon as consumers place selected products on the bar. Shoppers select the most relevant skin tone from a range of shades, and the products are then shown overlaid on models’ hands/faces on-screen.

The exterior façade of the store features a Burberry-check-shaped screen displaying branded content – see also Digital Façade, Burberry Shanghai, Virtual Stores & Media Facades and our coverage of the Media Facades Summit for more on this technology. Meanwhile, inside, a touchscreen presents ‘My Burberry Digital Experience’. This allows consumers to watch the latest video campaigns, monogram a virtual bottle, and further explore Burberry’s beauty collections.

Beauty experts are also available on-site for more traditional make-up demonstrations and 20-minute one-to-one consultations designed to help consumers find their perfect scent. For more on personalised scent mapping strategies, see our Selling Scent report.

Dispensing with static till points, all payments are taken by the staff via tablets. For more, see New Transactions Technology. For more on tech-enhanced retail engagement, see Tech-Fuelled Retail Spaces, The Omni-Channel Store Space, part of the Future of the Store Industry Trend, In-Store Interactive, and Beauty Retail Trends 2014.