Freshly Cosmetics will open a store in the Glòries shopping center

Freshly Cosmetics reaffirms its commitment to Barcelona. The digital native brand selling natural cosmetics has announced the opening of a second physical store in the Catalan capital, where it currently has an establishment on Portaferrissa street, in the heart of the city. The second location is expected to open at the end of August in the Westfield Glòries shopping center, which records more than 14 million visitors annually. In parallel, the brand is also preparing the opening of a store on Monterols street in Reus (Tarragona), the city where the company was born and is headquartered, founded in 2016 by Mireia Trepat, Miquel Antolín and Joan Miralles (no longer associated with the company).

The Catalan firm has three other establishments located in Madrid, Valencia and London and with these two new openings it advances in the so-called "hybrid strategy", which combines the sale of its products in its online store ---a channel that concentrates the bulk of its turnover--- with commercialization in emblematic own stores, called Freshly Stores, and in authorized third-party establishments. Recently, the brand has also entered Italy with the inauguration of corners within the department stores that the La Rinascente group has in cities such as Rome, Milan and Florence.

In 2021, explains the startup, the turnover of the Freshly Stores in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia represented 5% of the total, a percentage that will grow thanks to these two new openings and other points of sale that will be launched before the end of the year. "After a period in which online sales have not stopped growing, with the end of restrictions, people have returned to the streets and retail sales have rebounded," says the company to justify the expansion with physical stores.

"We will increasingly see Freshly Cosmetics as a brand that flows and revolves around people and Freshly Fans: being digital or physical is no longer a strategy because we will be where people need us. We are not a phygital brand, we are a brand focused on demonstrating that the future of cosmetics must be centered on health and the planet," says Miquel Antolín, co-founder and CEO of the company.

In the last six years, Freshly Cosmetics has experienced sustained growth through its online channel, surpassing one million customers and accumulating a global turnover of over 100 million euros since its inception. In 2021, the company invoiced 45 million, representing a 50% growth compared to 2020 and triple that of 2019, prior to the pandemic.

According to Antolín, "the Glòries store will represent a new concept of Freshly Store in a shopping center." "Opening two Freshly Stores in two months will be putting another gear into our proposal to get closer to people, and we are sure these will not be the last," he adds.

The company, one of the great success stories in Catalonia in the field of e-commerce, had until now self-financed its growth, but at the end of 2021, it closed its first financing round with the aim of boosting its internationalization. It raised 22 million dollars in an operation led by the British fund Blossom Capital.