Picture this: You’re waiting in line outside a pop-up in LA. Someone snaps a Polaroid-style photo of you and your friends. You tap it with your phone, and suddenly Selena Gomez is on your screen, thanking you for coming and inviting you to preview Rare Beauty’s newest products in the Shop app. By the time you walk through the door of the pop-up, you already know what you want to buy.

Inside, you step into a dream closet. An AI-powered mirror greets you with a compliment that makes you feel truly seen. And then it recommends the perfect shade of blush, just for you. Later, when you’re ready to check out, the associate hands you a free full-sized blush. Your shade has also conveniently been synced to your customer profile.

This is the future of retail: personalized experiences that build real connection and long-term relationships with your customers.

The Challenge

Beauty brands don’t just host pop-ups to generate sales. They’re opportunities to engage with their community IRL — for their customers to feel seen, valued, and be part of something special. The challenge is that intimacy is inherently hard to scale. So how do you create memorable experiences for a thousand customers a day?

The magic is in the unified system

Let’s break down what made this pop-up experience different:

NFC photos: From waiting in line → previewing products

While they waited in line, each guest was offered an instant photo as a memento from the event. On the back of each picture was an embedded NFC sticker that:

• Unlocked a surprise video message from Selena Gomez on guests’ phones
• Invited them to browse the full Soft Pinch Liquid Blush collection in the Shop app
• Turned dead time into an opportunity to browse and plan their purchase

The NFC stickers on these photos offer another advantage; they can be updated at any time. This means Rare Beauty can update where these photos link to in the future, if they so choose. Each photo becomes a connection point they can activate whenever they want — for a new product launch, exclusive sale, or sneak peek. The gift that keeps on giving.

The magic of AI: Over 1,500 makeup consultations

Inside the pop-up, guests entered a “dream closet” that featured a magic mirror. Within seconds, the mirror displayed a personalized compliment and recommended the perfect shade of Soft Pinch Liquid Blush. If they provided their email, guests were sent a unique QR code to redeem a free blush at checkout. A custom POS extension enabled associates to securely scan these QR codes and add the right shade to their order. Each code was unique, so it couldn’t be faked or shared. This made the activation seamless and scalable, while also capturing new customer data for Rare Beauty to grow their community.

The best brands don’t just sell products—they build community. Rare Beauty gets that. With Shopify, every interaction, whether it’s a tap on a photo in line or a recommendation from a magic mirror, flows into one system. That means you can engage with your customers wherever they are, collect insights in the moment, and use that data to deepen relationships everywhere else. Physical and digital aren’t separate channels, they’re one seamless experience.

The results speak for themselves

📊 1,500+ personalized blushes gifted

📸 700+ pieces of organic user-generated content

👀 ~4M earned Social impressions

Ready to create your own unified commerce experience?

The technology that powered this experience isn’t exclusive to big brands with big budgets. It’s available to any merchant who wants to connect with their community in new ways. Discover how Shopify POS can transform any customer interaction into a moment of connection and conversion for your brand.