Journelle Plans to Open Global HQ With Wellness Center, Retail Store – WWD

Journelle continues to lean into wellness. 

The lingerie retailer plans to open an 8,000-square-foot global headquarters in Lower Manhattan — complete with a wellness center equipped with Journelle’s first beauty bar and med spa cosmetic services; the retailer’s flagship, selling lingerie, sleepwear and wellness products; a space for social gatherings, such as bridal and bachelorette parties, and the company’s head offices. 

The space, which will be located at 50 Broad Street in the city’s Financial District, is set to open in September, in time for New York Fashion Week. 

“We are looking to pioneer and revolutionize how all people shop for intimates and address their intimate skin needs and intimate product needs all in one place,” Guido Campello, co-owner and co-chief executive officer of Journelle, told WWD exclusively. “By merging these two concepts of intimates and self care, we are the first to provide people with the unique ability to buy back time and confidence while also feeling rejuvenated inside and out.” 

The new location will offer lingerie and sleepwear from a number of brands, including the Journelle private label, in addition to beauty products and cosmetic treatments, such as dermatology services, lasers and injectables, supervised by Sapna Palep, co-owner and co-CEO of Journelle, who is also a dermatologist.

“We are creating a new model that does not exist because we are in the unique position of already having an expertise in both these areas and being able to merge it with a layer of luxury,” said Campello, whose family founded Cosabella lingerie. 

As for Palep, in addition to running Journelle with her husband Campello, she is a board-certified dermatologist who founded Spring Street Dermatology in New York’s SoHo neighborhood more than a decade ago.

But Journelle has been embracing the wellness category, including sexual wellness, for some time. In early 2021 the company launched The Love Box, which includes select sexual wellness products, such as candles and essential oils. 

“Overall, the stigma around sexual wellness has definitely gone down. The more people talk about it, the less they feel self-conscious about it,” Palep told WWD last fall.

Campello added: “The relationship between first and second skin deserves a luxury destination where clients can have all of their needs met at once. We think of how we already serve brides and bridal parties, moms-to-be and even couples for date night and how much more powerful that can be by now merging intimates and self care across both services and products.”

Journelle, which recently turned 15, was founded by Claire Chambers in 2007. The firm changed hands several times before Palep and Campello acquired it in 2019.

In the roughly three years since, the duo has helped the company grow from a small curation of luxury lingerie to more than 70 brands in stores and online, in addition to its partnership on the digital shelves of Target. The firm has also expanded into new product categories, such as tweens, swimwear, shapewear, maternity, mastectomy, men’s lingerie and wellness, while growing the private label. Journelle also launched an online virtual fit service in 2020.  

Now the company is growing its retail fleet. The new headquarters will mark Journelle’s fifth physical location. There are currently three shops in New York City and one in Chicago. The new headquarters will be the firm’s first retail expansion since the acquisition. 

“Journelle is investing in downtown,” Campello said. “We also see firsthand the revitalization happening on Wall Street with the recent opening of Casa Cipriani, [impending] Printemps department store and others. There’s so much investment coming into the neighborhood with the who’s-who now venturing downtown and we are so excited to be a part of it to make Wall Street sexy again.”