The days of the classic candy-and-chip vending machine have been gone for years now. These days, you can get cupcakes, slices of pizza, heads of lettuce, mashed potatoes and fresh-squeezed juice from the dang things.
You can’t blame any brand from getting in on the trend. After all, a vending machine provides a full-blown ad right at the point of purchase and is the ultimate grab-and-go service for customers. Chanel has gotten into the act with a new vending machine at one of London’s Selfridges department stores that shells out three shades of a new mascara, Le Volume de Chanel Mascara, until May 8, according to BritishVogue.
Of course, you can't stuff this attitudinal machine with any old coins. Naturellement, there is a special Chanel-logo coin that consumers need to get first in order to make the purchase, Refinery29.com reports.
Chanel had such a hit with its human-powered vending machine after it introduced Vogue's Fashion's Night Out London event last September that it decided to move forward with a fully mechanized machine this spring.
However, as the Independent notes, rival department store Harvey Nichols already has a beauty vending machine of its own with “32 beauty bags carefully edited by Anne-Marie Solowij (ex-Voguebeauty director) and Millie Kendall (co-founder of Rubie and Millie).” Harvey Nicks custpmers can use a touchpad to see what is in each bag before purchasing it.
Beauty seems to be the latest category to be getting a boost in the vending-machine industry. Witness the Nailmatic nail polish vending machine as well as a partnership between Vodafone and Nails Inc. to create a special color that was available to Vodafone VIP customers from a specific vending machine. But these brands are somewhat (fashionably) late to the game.
Sephora partnered with JCPenney three years ago, when the latter brand seemed to still have some strength, and created a vending machine that housed 50 of Sephora’s most popular products. Twenty machines were placed in JCP that didn’t already have in-store Sephora counters.
Despite JCP's recent stumbles, Sephora now has counters in 375 of the brand’s stores nationwide. And Sephora, for one, is doing quite well.
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