A new retailer selling only mini beauty products is coming to NYC

After years of curating major retailers’ beauty selections, Beautyspace is opening a store to sell beauty itself—in a way its partners never have.

The former wholesale distribution arm of UK beauty retailer SpaceNK, which was spun out and sold to beauty distributor The PCA Companies in 2024 (Ulta Beauty subsequently acquired SpaceNK in 2025), Beautyspace curates beauty shop-in-shops featuring more than 200 brands for 10 retailers spanning luxury to mass, including Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, Macy’s, Walmart, and Old Navy, Noah Rosenblatt, president of Beautyspace US, told Retail Brew.

But on September 10, it’s striking out on its own, making its brick-and-mortar retail debut with a 765-square-foot store in New York City’s Union Square called Little Luxuries dedicated solely to selling mini beauty products across 100 prestige brands.

Rosenblatt, who has led retail for LVMH, Henri Bendel, and Tommy Hilfiger, sees the concept as a “candy store for beauty,” capitalizing on beauty consumers’ interest in travel-sized items.

“Nobody walks into a candy store and buys one item, and in beauty we think the same around minis,” he said. “Nobody’s going to walk in and say, ‘Great, I just want this one item.’ They’re truly going to build a basket and be able to create this environment where they explore every category.”

Little effect: Travel-sized beauty products have increasingly meant big business for beauty retailers. Retail Brew reported last month that CVS has seen beauty mini category sales soar 140% YoY, and is expanding its minis assortment across 1,200 more stores. Target, meanwhile, said its upcoming Target Beauty Studio will have a dedicated spot for minis to provide shoppers “an easy, affordable way to uncover their next favorite product.”

And while nearly every major beauty seller dedicates space in stores to feature mini and travel-sized beauty, they’re small in comparison to the full-sized selection. CVS’s space spans 12–16 feet, for example, while Ulta Beauty and Sephora largely focus theirs at the checkout line.

Through Beautyspace’s partnerships with retailers, it has seen firsthand the success of beauty minis. And with beauty retail becoming increasingly competitive, Rosenblatt said Beautyspace’s first step into brick-and-mortar retail needed to be a “unique concept” (a mini-only store is a fresh format in the US, though a similar concept, Minimuse, operates in Singapore). He sees the store as a win-win for brands and consumers.

“Brands that are looking for new customer acquisition continue to find this younger consumer who typically will say, ‘I’ve always wanted to try some of these higher end brands, but the barrier, the price point to entry, is typically a little bit higher,’” Rosenblatt said. “So this is meeting both of them in the right place.’”

Try on for size: Little Luxuries follows what it’s calling a “buy, try, and apply” model. Across roughly 90% of its in-store brands, shoppers who join its free loyalty program can apply the retail price of the mini beauty product they purchase at Little Luxuries to the equivalent full-size item on the Beautyspace website within 30 days of purchase using a code on their receipt. Beautyspace’s website, which launched in December, sells mini and full-sized products from more than 90 brands.

Prices at Little Luxuries range from $4 to $125, Rosenblatt said. The store features two to four SKUs per brand, with the exception of hair care brand Oribe’s eight-SKU block, with brands including Anastasia Beverly Hills, Osea, Touchland, and a selection of “niche” fragrance brands like Floral Street, he said. The store also features an exclusive product: an extra-small-sized hairbrush from luxury hair tool brand La Bonne Brosse (its large hairbrushes sell for $198).

The assortment highlights best-selling SKUs from each brand and because of that, Rosenblatt said, the store won’t feature many testers for consumers to sample products. Little Luxuries plans to lean into in-store eventing, he said, and also features a claw machine full of deluxe samples to allow customers to trial products.

And because mini beauty products can be difficult to recycle, Beautyspace partnered with TerraCycle, a company that handles hard-to-recycle materials, to allow customers to bring their empty mini product packaging—whether they were purchased from Little Luxuries or not—to be recycled.

Looking ahead…Beautyspace is already planning further retail expansion, as Rosenblatt noted. The company has already begun identifying additional New York City locations for 2027, with a long-term goal to open 30–50 stores across markets.