The Tamesis
Violet Gray plans to shift to physical retail in 2026. The once digital-first beauty darling will open three stores in the United States this year, plus a store-within-a-store in London.
Violet Gray will open in East Hampton in May and Dallas in late summer, and its Palisades Village location in Los Angeles will reopen this summer, around the same time it will open a store-in-store in partnership with British retailer Harvey Nichols on April 20.
For a retailer that until last year had just one brick-and-mortar location, it’s a significant investment in physical retail that the team hopes will drive growth after a tough period. After launching the retailer in 2012 and opening a store in Los Angeles two years later, founder Cassandra Gray has built Violet Gray into an online retailer known for its curated portfolio of emerging independent beauty brands and trusted luxury brands with an editorial lens never before seen in the beauty world. In 2022, Violet Gray was acquired by Farfetch for $50 million (the company had raised $29.2 million in funding at the time), but the e-tailer shuttered its beauty business the following year due to financial difficulties. In September 2024, Gray bought back the company for an undisclosed amount along with private equity investor and current Chairman and CEO Sherif Guirgis. (Gray is a member of the executive committee.)
“Violet Gray has an amazingly loyal following, a high profile and the highest level of credibility and planning,” Gilgis said. “I think that was true before the sale to Farfetch, and I think that’s still true under Farfetch, [but] It’s not necessarily optimized. ” The CEO said that when he and Gray bought back the business, they saw an opportunity to own a white space in the premium, curated experiential beauty market.
The rationale for the next U.S. space is twofold: provide existing customers with more access to Violet Gray’s services and brand world, and attract new consumers who will likely restock via e-commerce once they learn about the brand. “It’s about going to more places, reaching more people and really showing our point of differentiation,” Gilgis said. “I do think that, to some extent, it’s easier to highlight that difference in a physical environment than in a digital environment.”
He said that since the acquisition in 2024, the team has been focused on the building blocks: re-branding the website platform as Shopify and strengthening the team, including the appointment of group president Tracy Kline in June 2025. Violet Gray declined to disclose revenue at this stage, but said the business will grow about 50% year-on-year in 2025 and is growing close to 100% so far in 2026.
