Katie Canales/Business Insider
Goop's brick-and-mortar at 2121 Fillmore St.
- Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow's controversial $250 million wellness brand, has opened a new store in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood.
- The brick-and-mortar at 2121 Fillmore St. carries the kind of wellness paraphernalia that Goop has become known for - for better or for worse.
- There are $28 "wellness journals," $15,000 necklaces, $600 cardigans, and "psychic vampire repellent."
- We paid the new San Francisco store a visit. Take a look inside.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
For many people, their first time hearing about Goop may have been back in 2017 when the company's infamous $66 jade and rose quartz vaginal eggs hit the mainstream.
But if you haven't been inducted into the world of Goop, here's a primer: Goop is the brainchild of actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who has been working to tap into the $4.2 trillion wellness market with a combination of lifestyle products, clothing, accessories, and, occasionally, medically questionable self-care products. The most common hallmark of Goop products is a high price tag.
Goop has found a loyal following of wealthy, self-care die-hards who have eagerly gravitated toward the company's bath soaks, skincare, clothing, home goods, and other items. But the brand has been met with the same amount of fervor from critics who say that Goop offers experimental products backed up by unsubstantiated claims.
Take, for instance, the $120 "healing" sticker packs that claimed to regulate the body's energy frequency with the help of "NASA space suit material," which Gizmodo's Rae Paoletta reported was entirely untrue. And then, of course, there are the aforementioned vaginal eggs, which also faced backlash: The company was hit with a $145,000 lawsuit for false advertisement after Goop marketed the product as a means to balance hormones and regulate menstrual cycles.
But despite all the hullabaloo, Goop is still thriving. The brand has ballooned into a $250 million wellness titan, as Insider's Ellen Cranley reports, and Goop has opened locations in hip, wealthy markets like New York's Greenwich Village, London's Notting Hill, and Los Angeles.
Now, there's a store in San Francisco, which is Goop's fourth-largest market in terms of readership, according to the Mercury News. And the wellness brand has once again cleverly pinpointed the perfect nook in its new market to open a brick-and-mortar: the affluent Pacific Heights neighborhood.
Pac Heights for short, this is where some of the Bay Area's old money and also elite billionaires made rich off the tech boom hang their hats. Shops surrounding the new Goop store on Fillmore St. have similar price points, so the area is likely to attract a prosperous crowd.
We paid the shop a visit, and though SF Gate's Tess McLean found the notorious vaginal eggs buried in the back when she visited the shop in November, they were nowhere to be found. But we did spot vibrators, $28 "wellness journals," $15,000 necklaces, "psychic vampire repellent," and aromatherapy mist designed to be sprayed on your child in the midst of a tantrum.
Take a look inside.