Beauty hotspot: PURESEOUL makes Midlands debut at Bullring, as health and beauty sales jump 26 per cent
Health and beauty transactions at Bullring & Grand Central have jumped 26 per cent year-on-year, as Hammerson continues to strengthen its Birmingham city centre destination with best-in-class beauty and wellbeing brands including regional first, PURESEOUL which opens today (Friday 11th Oct).
In July alone sales in the category grew by 69 percent vs 2023, making it the best-performing category at the destination, as brands including Rituals, Jo Malone and L’Occitane invested in new cosmetic lines and customers prioritised self-care products.
Katy Letch, Head of Leasing UK at Hammerson, commented: “From the all-encompassing luxury experience at Selfridges, premium wellness brands Kiehl’s and L’Occitane, to household names such as Boots and MAC, Bullring & Grand Central is the home of health and beauty in Birmingham. Customer appetite for beauty and wellbeing products reflects the demand we are seeing from premium brands including PURESEOUL, Rituals and Sephora for quality and well-connected city centre destinations.”
PURESEOUL, the UK's premier K-Beauty store, has officially made its Midlands debut with only its second store outside London. Located on Bullring’s middle level, the 800 sq ft unit showcases one of the brand’s largest make-up collections to date, with UK debuts from BBIA, Milk Touch and AOU. Stocking over 900 different types of products across make-up, skincare, and hair care, PURESEOUL Birmingham stocks exclusive collaborations with famous K-beauty names like Torriden, NEEDLY, Heveblue, and Beplain. Staff specialising in Korean beauty are also on hand to offer personalized one-on-one skincare advice to customers in store. Designed to reflect PURESEOUL’s captivating blue-hued ‘pure’ aesthetic, the Bullring store features a dedicated wall of over 60 different types of sheet masks and a TikTok display highlighting viral bestsellers from social media.
Leslie Tang, CEO of PURESEOUL, added: “Bullring & Grand Central has a reputation as a destination for regional firsts and experience-driven curation of brands. It is this combination that makes it the ideal location for our first-ever Midlands store and second outside of London. Expanding the PURESEOUL brand into the Midlands has been a key priority for the business, especially given Birmingham is our second biggest market in the UK, and we are pleased to welcome our K-beauty lovers in the region to our brand-new experiential space.”
The opening of PURESEOUL forms part of the continued repositioning of Bullring to strengthen and diversify the brand mix. This has seen the first Nike Rise in the Midlands open its doors, regional firsts for Pull&Bear and Bershka, and the introduction of leisure concepts TOCA Social, Lane7 and Sandbox VR. In November, Sephora will bolster the beauty offering with a new store – a regional first.