Physical retail stores are alive and well as shoppers flock to specialty brands at the expense of traditional department stores, with another beauty brand expanding in a major hub.
Beauty lovers queued outside the much-anticipated Mecca flagship store opening on Bourke St on Friday morning, with lines snaking around the building and shutting down the normally busy thoroughfare.
Shelves stocked with more than 200 brands across three separate levels span the floor space of 400 square metres that includes a hair salon, nail parlour, piercing station and florist.
The brand expects 50,000 customers to wander through every week.
"We wanted to build a store that delivered everything that our customers wanted," Mecca's Marita Burke said.
"So much of that was experiential and the opportunity to really explore, test and buy products from all categories."
June retail data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicated department store sales increased by 1.9 per cent month-on-month compared to online spending, which rose by 3.9 per cent.
Mecca's continued expansion into brick-and-mortar sites highlighted the trend of leveraging services and experiences to attract customers, Queensland University of Technology's Gary Mortimer said.
"Physical retail is certainly live and kicking," Prof Mortimer told AAP.
"Big retail flagship stores like Mecca, it's not just about buying stuff, it's also about the social experience, the recreational experiences and being able to touch and feel and try products on."
While the heydays of traditional department stores such as Myer and David Jones stretched from the 1950s to the 1970s, shoppers today are being drawn to specialty retailers.
Prof Mortimer said department stores remained a vehicle for cosmetic, makeup and fashion brands in the 1990s and early 2000s, but many of those brands now had signature retail businesses.
Mecca's Melbourne flagship store was a department store for cosmetics, he said, that provided a wider range of products than a traditional department store.
"That's almost another nail in the coffin of the traditional department stores," he said.
Friends Shania Ly and Samantha Moraes were among the crowds who braved the chilly morning to line up for the Mecca opening, arriving at 6.45am.
"It's got everything - every possible treatment you could probably do in the one place without having to go to five different locations," Ms Moraes told AAP.
While Mecca also offers customers the convenience of shopping online with the click of a button, Ms Burke said Mecca "so believes in brick and mortar".
Swinburne Professor of Marketing Sean Sands said online shopping offered convenience but physical stores could create a sense of community.
"When you give consumers a reason to come to physical retail, it can do extremely well," he said.
