Bobbi Brown opens flagship store in Montclair for her new makeup line Jones Road

Bobbi Brown is back.

Twenty-six years after selling her eponymous cosmetics company to Estee Lauder, the makeup maven has opened a retail store in Montclair called Jones Road.

The 1,000-square-foot flagship store, carrying Brown's year-old direct-to-consumer cosmetics line, Jones Road, opened Tuesday in a new office building on the corner of Walnut and Grove streets owned by her husband, real estate investor Steven Plofker.

Brown, a 30-year resident of Montclair and author of nine bestselling books, was at the store last week, greeting customers who lined up outside and working with staff. Like them, she was sporting a black T-shirt with white block lettering that echoes the clean, spare aesthetic of the brand.

She calls the line "the ultimate no-makeup makeup" and said she follows "guidelines even more stringent than those set by the EU to eliminate over 2,700 potentially harmful ingredients." The face pencils, skin balm, glittering eye shadow and other products had been available only online until now.

In creating the line, Brown said, she took a cue from her own beauty routine, which "really changed" over the years.

"I didn't like the heavy makeup look. I think women look better when they have a luminosity and freshness, not a matte foundation," she said. "That doesn't work on older women, or any age, really."

During the pandemic, she said, people got used to wearing less makeup, using it more to look "fresher and feel better" than to try to transform their looks.

She launched Jones Road a year ago, 25 years to the day after her non-compete agreement with Estee Lauder expired, and it was hot from day one, exceeding sales projections and being named one of the fastest-growing direct-to-consumer brands.

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Brown said she brings three decades of experience in the industry to Jones Road that she didn't have when launching Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. "I know so much more about everything from formulating products to launching a new business," she said. Brown said it's liberating no longer to have to depend on department stores to sell products.

The Montclair store will be a makeup "think tank," she said, where her team can meet customers face-to-face, hear and see what products they want next, and host events and workshops.

She'll be "in and out" of the store, not so much to interface with clients as to support her staff, a business principle she cites as key to the success of The George, the 31-room boutique hotel on North Mountain Avenue that she owns with Plofker.

If the online success of Jones Road and her other business ventures is any indication, staff at Brown's retail store will be busy. Forty products will be on offer, and one of them, the award-winning Miracle Balm, has been wildly successful, with a waiting list that has hit 10,000 names.

"It's definitely our number one product; it flies out the door," she said. "It's a tint, moisturizer, lip and cheek product or something you wear when you aren't wearing any makeup and just want to look a little better. There's nothing like it in any other line."

Miracle Balm was a "happy accident," she said — a sample that came from the lab that was not what she'd been looking for. "But I put my hands in it and tried it and I'm like, oh, my God, this is magic."

Brown credits her "landlord," her husband of 33 years, for making her brick-and-mortar presence a reality.

"[Steve] came to me and said, 'I have a store for you; come look at it.' I looked and was like, 'It's too small!' But now I see it's perfect."

The location, a short walk from Brown's office at 18 Label Studios, her film and photography studio and event space, ended up being a big draw for her.

"The store is in a fantastic location that's walkable and has great organic traffic thanks to The Corner, Van Hook Cheese and the many other amazing businesses on Walnut Street," she said. "And Montclair is where our customers are. They understand and appreciate what clean beauty means, and they might also know that I live here in town."

Go: 111 Grove St., Montclair. jonesroadbeauty.com. No phone yet, but email: hi@jonesroadbeauty.com.

Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday.

Julia Martin is the 2021 recipient of the New Jersey Society for Professional Journalists' David Carr award for her coverage of Montclair for NorthJersey.com.

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Email: jmartin@gannettnj.com

Twitter: @TheWriteJulia

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Bobbi Brown opens Jones Road cosmetics in Montclair