FaceGym’s post-pandemic return to brick-and-mortar is in full swing. 

The brand will launch in-store at Sephora with facial sculpting tools and skincare products and roll out to 46 doors nationwide in the approaching weeks. 

Among the many seven stock keeping units that can be available in Sephora stores are the Full Face Sculpt Kit, Face Coach and the brand’s recently launched Youthful Energetic Roller, a microneedling tool that’s infused with niacinamide and retinol alternative reneseed.  

“What FaceGym does higher than most is creating that experiential beauty experience,” said FaceGym founder and artistic director Inge Theron, who spearheaded the brand’s pivot to digital when the pandemic hit and is now leveraging the brand’s learnings right into a newfangled omnichannel strategy.  

By launching online classes when COVID-19 took hold, the facial toning studio was in a position to significantly broaden its reach — an effect it seeks to duplicate with its Sephora partnership. 

The brand also forayed into skincare in 2021, which Theron said was a key move in acquiring latest customers during pandemic lockdowns and a fitting complement to the brand’s facial tool assortment.

“FaceGym is thought for its application techniques,” she said. “We imagine that in facial fitness, your application is half the battle; it’s 50 percent those wonderful actives we put in, but the best way you apply the product makes such an enormous difference.”

In keeping with the brand’s aim to offer an immersive FaceGym experience even outside of the studio, the corporate added QR codes to product packaging in 2020 that direct consumers to video tutorials demonstrating each product’s best application practices.

With the Sephora launch, store employees are actually also available to guide shoppers through a few of the brand’s facial fitness techniques as they shop. It is that this inclusive approach that Theron believes makes FaceGym indispensable to its consumers. 

“In a nutshell, we have now a reason to exist because we treat the face otherwise,” the founder said. “For brands coming in now, when you wouldn’t have a really extraordinary viewpoint, and also you’re not differentiated along with your approach, I just don’t think there’s enough space.” 

The brand has been increasing its presence on the West Coast — it recently launched on Violet Gray and is opening its 14th studio in Santa Monica, Calif., later this 12 months.

“We’ve had a really strong recovery in studios post lockdown — there was a pent-up demand,” Theron said, noting that the brand is on target to grow by greater than 70 percent this 12 months. 

Also fueling FaceGym’s growth are recent partnerships with Maybourne Hotel Group, 1 Hotel and SoHo House, with Theron hinting that one other activation — this time involving rooftops and full-body workouts — can be rolling out to major cities across the U.S. in the approaching months. 

The brand will even be expanding further into Europe, Australia and the Middle East within the near future. Theron didn’t comment on the brand’s sales, but industry sources estimate FaceGym will do $70 million by 2025.

“The tried-and-tested route remains to be paramount for us — we really imagine in brick and mortar,” Theron said.