Raymond Cloosterman’s looking to take Manhattan.
The founder and owner of Rituals is set to add three more New York City doors this spring and plans to have 10 Rituals doors in the city by the end of the year.
Next up is 337 Bleecker Street between 10th and Christopher Streets, which will open on Feb. 12. That will be followed by 842 Lexington Avenue at 64th Street and a yet-to-be-finalized opening at 1333 Broadway at 35th Street in March. Later this year, a shop in Williamsburg and one at Westfield World Trade Center, as well as a third on Fifth Avenue intended to be a flagship for the brand, are planned.
“We see the U.S. and New York in particular as a huge opportunity,” said Cloosterman, a former Unilever executive who opened his first Rituals boutique in Amsterdam in 2000. “We’re moving carefully and trying things out to learn, but we also want to make a strong statement that we are committed to be here, and with that, we think we’ll have a good footprint. As the new kid in town, we need to establish a number of stores to create awareness. It’s difficult to say where we will eventually top out.”
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Cloosterman already operates stores on Lafayette and Columbus Avenue in Manhattan and Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn.
The new stores are also a place where Cloosterman is trying out new business offerings. “The heart of each store will be an area of discovery, with new products and categories,” said Cloosterman. “We’re not following all the traditional rules. We are bath and body, gift, makeup and skin care luxury lifestyle brand.” Cloosterman also said product additions were coming in April.
The Bleecker Street and Lexington Avenue locations will be the first in the U.S. to offer Soul Wear, the brand’s lounge wear line. These locations will also serve as the pilot markets for new brand innovations, especially those continuing the push to position Rituals as not only a beauty brand, but a lifestyle brand. Rituals already sells items such as washing-up liquid, teas, bathrobes and towels.
Cloosterman said the Rituals business grew 40 percent in 2015, driven largely by new stores and new countries. That followed 30 percent growth in 2014, he said.
Rituals is sold in more than 400 free-standing stores in 24 countries. It also has department store shops-in-shops and perfumeries, with more than 1,400 doors, and travel retail, including airports, airlines and 75,000 hotel rooms. Its e-commerce unit rings up 6 percent of overall the company’s business and could comprise 20 percent of sales in the next five to 10 years.
In addition to his own stores, Cloosterman is driving growth via luxury department stores such as Barneys New York in the U.S. He is also concentrating on a third channel, travel retail, he said. “All channels experienced growth in 2015,” he said.