Gwyneth Paltrow is everywhere
The scoop on Goop? Its boss chats about the growing empire of stores, products, even a magazine.
In a large crowd of friends and celebs, including Demi Moore, Rachel Zoe and Christian Louboutin, actress-entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow, with her writerproducer boyfriend Brad Falchuk at her side, celebrated the first Goop Lab store at Brentwood Country Mart earlier this fall.
The bricks-and-mortar space is an offshoot of the Goop brand, Paltrow’s content and e-commerce company, which started as a weekly email in 2008.
The Brentwood store was designed by New York interiors firm Roman and Williams in the style of an English cottage. Its stone-tiled porch leads to a greenhouse/mud room, kitchen, apothecary and living room, where Goop’s apparel and skin-care lines, fragrances, candles and vitamins — all launched within the last two years — are on display with other goods.
Noora Raj Brown, Goop’s vice president of communications, says the brand’s revenue more than doubled from 2015 to 2016. It’s expected to nearly triple in 2017, compared with 2016, while online sales of Goop branded products are on track to grow sixfold by the end of this year, compared with 2016. The Business of Fashion estimates Goop’s 2016 revenue to be $15 million to $20 million.
Goop continues to make a name for itself despite critics who question the brand’s products and wellness advice.
In June, the brand had its soldout In Goop Health wellness summit in Culver City, and the Goop team has two more summits planned next year — one in New York on Jan. 27 and another in L.A. on June 8 and 9.
Fall has been a busy time for the Goop team. In September, Paltrow launched a quarterly Goop magazine in partnership with Vogue and Vanity Fair publisher Condé Nast. (The 44-year-old appeared on the magazine’s first cover naked and covered in mud.)
Last week marked the debut of Goop Gift holiday shops in New York and Miami as well as at Lido Marina Village in Newport Beach, which offer a dozen categories of presents for guys, pets, kids, hosts, travelers, cooks and more. The pop-ups follow last December’s hit temporary Goop Gift store in Brentwood.
Also, beginning Monday, a drinkable Goopglow Morning Skin Superpowder, single-dose packs of vitamin-enriched powder to help enhance the skin, will be available. Additionally, Paltrow is in early stages of planning a television series, “The Radical Wellness Show,” with Propagate Content but won’t have updates on that until next year, according to Brown.
Fresh off a plane from Atlanta, where she was filming the fourth “Avengers” film, Paltrow sat down in her Santa Monica office for a chat with The Times.
Clad in a denim Stella McCartney jumpsuit, the mother of two sat behind her desk, swallowing Goop Wellness vitamins one by one while sipping a Starbucks coffee, telling us a New York Goop Lab store is now in the works. What is it about Goop that resonates with so many women?
I think the idea of wellness really takes hold when people contemplate the idea that they have autonomy over their own mental health, spiritual health, physical health and the health of their relationships, and they have curiosity about how they could optimize them. I did a master cleanse in the ’90s — remember that maple syrup, lemon juice thing? — and felt so much better when I was done. When you try something and it works, you catch the wellness bug. I also think women are historically underserved in terms of getting the answers they are looking for when they don’t feel well. Women used to be diagnosed with “hysteria.” It’s always been firmly in the culture that women should stay in their lane and not necessarily feel empowered to ask questions that might push existing limits or infrastructures. What we like to do is ask questions that we would like the answers to, and not every protocol is right for every person. Why did you decide to launch a print magazine now?
It’s interesting to be a digitally native brand first and then play with distribution. How do you reach new people? The digital age is incredible, and it’s opened up every opportunity and made the world far more democratic.
At the same time, it’s fastpaced and very frenetic. There’s an overload of information. I love the idea of doing something oldschool and analog that seems counterintuitive, making Goop into something you can physically hold. I like the idea inherent in a magazine that you have to carve out a minute for yourself. Ditto for your store.
I think people need touch points. Our pop-ups have been incredibly successful. I grew up on 21st Street and Georgina Avenue, so I used to walk to the Brentwood Country Mart every weekend. The entrance to the Goop store used to be a candy store where I spent my whole life. So it’s this deeply sentimental place for me, which is so funny and fitting.
We talk about having maybe five to seven Goop stores around the world, in addition to our popup franchises. We are planning the next one in 2018 in New York. Goop’s 10-year anniversary is next year. What’s next?
We talk about home as a category for 2019, but it has to be thoughtful and done with meaning. A lot of stuff in the home is very toxic, especially pans and plastic and soft goods.
We think, “Is there a way to bring un-sprayed, organic cotton to people at a direct-to-consumer price?” We try to figure out the problem for ourselves and our readers.