As I walked up Silom recently, I came across something surprising: a new multi-level beauty shop with black walls, pink chains hanging from the ceilings, lurid fluorescent signs, and music blaring.
It was nearly midnight, yet several young women were shopping inside the glass-front shop. What was this? It had the polished look of a Sephora or an Eve and Boy, but it was neither.
Time to investigate.
Turns out it’s called Hej Street Beauty, and it’s the brainchild of CEO Jenny Wongjesadasakul, whose professional background is in the decidedly less glamorous business of plastic manufacturing and land assets. But now she’s turned her attention to Hej, which opened on Silom Road on April 1.
Jenny tells me that her chief inspirations are street art and street fashion, and so — she set out to create a street beauty shop, since “as many beauty trends start on a sidewalk as [they do] a runway.”
Hej focuses on “middle to mass” brands, says Jenny, which means that the majority of items in the shop are under THB500. A sheet mask can be had for as little as THB19. They carry a handful of exclusive-to-Thailand brands, including skincare line Chu’s Skin (from Korea) and makeup range Girlactik (from the US), beloved for their matte liquid lipsticks.
She has a smattering of more high-end lines too, like Clinique, Anna Sui, and fragrances from luxury brands.
Hej is doing a lot of things that other Asian beauty retailers aren’t: they encourage customers to play by supplying testers of everything and a space to sit at a “beauty bar.” Jenny suggests painting a nail (or ten) at the nail bar as well. “Many people come in to test and leave without buying, I don’t care. As long as they enjoy today, maybe they’ll come back and buy tomorrow,” said the businesswoman.
She shakes her head at what she calls “the old way” of buying makeup: “It used to be, if you wanted to buy cosmetics, you had to to go the department store, sit quietly, and they look at you. You can’t touch the product, you feel uncomfortable. That doesn’t make you feel good. I’m trying to change that. Street beauty means that the products are still good quality but the price is reasonable and the style is friendly. You can touch anything here, do whatever you want, just sit and play at the beauty and nail bars.”
The shop is open until midnight on Silom — one of Bangkok’s busiest nightlife streets, favored by both Thais and foreigners. In earlier weeks, they played around with staying open until 2am but business dropped off. They also tried closing shop at 11pm but there were always people still shopping. “I let my customers dictate the hours,” Jenny said.
Hej hosts makeup parties every Friday night, during which anyone can get his or her face painted for free by a makeup artist without the sour attitude or obligation to buy — the kind of encounter often found at chain makeup stores or department store counters. They also have “shoot and share” periods where, if you come in and share a photo of yourself in the store on social media, you win a reward.
Here, Jenny seems to have thought of all the details: There is a row of seats upstairs where you can see the action on the first floor, charge your phone, work on your laptop, or have a beautifying drink containing collagen, vitamin c, fiber, l-carnitine, l-theanine, zinc, amino acids, or l-glutathione.
Cleverly, since she knows many a boyfriend will warm many a seat at the row of stools, she has placed a single wall stocked with men’s grooming items right beside it.
Though the 200 square meter Silom shop is her first, it’s not the flagship. That’s already underway at Central Rama 3 mall, an larger 250 square meter store that will open in the next few months. After that will be a shop in Chonburi in the new Robinson Lifestyle Mall before she starts to move to her real target market: those living in upcountry provinces without the beauty shopping opportunities city-dwellers take for granted.
Not only does Jenny plan to open shops in the less-talked-about of Thailand’s 77 provinces, she also wants to launch mobile beauty trucks that can go wherever potential customers may be: where factory workers congregate after their shifts, near universities, that sort of thing. And then, instead of going for the obvious big money international markets of Singapore or Hong Kong, she hopes to move into the less-often-considered Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam.
Most people who have encountered Hej in Silom — which opened without much fuss or fanfare — assume that it’s a beauty chain store from another country that they aren’t familiar with yet. It has that well-thought-out, organized, polished appeal of a larger chain, but it isn’t.
The shop may look flashy sometimes, but the motto “Shop. Chill. Charge. Share.” is one I can get behind. The sharing part, says Jenny, has to do with social media. “People like to go somewhere, take a selfie, check in, show off a bit. That’s why we created our art wall and evening activities. I just want to engage with everyone that comes in.”
Header photo: Hej Street Beauty CEO Jenny Wongjesadasakul at her shop on Silom.
FIND IT:
Hej Street Beauty
191 Silom Road
Daily, 11am-midnight
BTS Sala Daeng
