Keeppley Trendy Cosmetics Store Set C0103

Keeppley's Trendy Cosmetics Store is a City Corner model built from 348 blocks, with a detailed interior. Age 6+.

Cosmetics are always by the door, and that is deliberate

Walk into almost any department store in the world and the first thing you meet is the beauty hall. It has been that way for a century, and there are three reasons.

Cosmetics are small and expensive. A square metre of counter selling lipstick generates several times the revenue of a square metre selling coats, so the most valuable floor space in the building goes to the highest yield per metre.

They are bought on impulse. Almost nobody travels to a department store specifically for a mascara — it is added to a trip made for something else, which means it has to be passed rather than sought.

And they smell. A beauty hall fills the entrance with fragrance, which is the first impression of the shop and is entirely intentional. Retailers have understood the effect of scent on how long people stay and how much they spend since long before anyone measured it.

The lighting is the fourth reason nobody mentions: beauty counters are lit far brighter than the rest of the floor, because colour cannot be judged in dim light and because bright light reads as clean and new.

Eleven shops that make a street

City Corner sets are designed to stand shoulder to shoulder — narrow shopfronts around 18 to 20 cm tall with flat side walls. A run of four or five becomes a terrace, and reads as a place in a way one building never does.

The others are the dessert house (C0101), café (C0102), florist (C0104), fashion store (C0105), bookshop (C0107), teddy store (C0109), luxury store (C0110) and styling hall (C0111).

Specifications

Pieces: 348 · Series: Keeppley City Corner · Age: 6+
Model dimensions: 19 × 16.5 × 5 cm (7.5 × 6.5 × 2.0 in)