The $250 million wellness titan Goop opened a new store in San Francisco, complete with $600 cardigans and 'psychic vampire repellent.' Take a look inside.

Katie Canales

Dec 5, 2019, 23:50 IST

The $250 million wellness titan Goop opened a new store in San Francisco, complete with $600 cardigans and 'psychic vampire repellent.' Take a look inside.

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.
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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.

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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.

Upon entering, I was greeted with clothing hanging neatly. Most of the clothes were in the $400 to $1,000 price range, including a $600 cardigan. Opposite the clothing is kitchenware and cookbooks.

Near the kitchenware were items priced under $100. These were some of the only products in the shop in a more affordable price range for the average consumer.

On the shelves above were some practical goods, like collapsible and reusable steel straws and an AirPods adapter for when you need to hook up to a plane's entertainment system.

A $15,000 necklace rested behind glass in a display case.

Beyond the jewelry were rows and rows of skincare items, like a $26 bottle of body wash called "Get Happy."

Across from that display were more shelves of products, like an eyelash curler and "Bust Dust," or "anti-boob-sweat powder."

There were copies of "The Wellness Journal" for $28 apiece, which included pages to fill out daily entries of what you ate and the type of exercise you performed, among other prompts.

There were the $80 water bottles with inserted crystals that, theoretically, provide "healing energy." And makeup products were displayed on their own standalone table.

A wall in the back held vibrators with sex fantasy cliche-inspired names like "The Tennis Coach," "The Fireman, and "The Millionaire." There were also reusable menstrual cups and natural condoms.

On a shelf below the vibrators were bottles of aromatherapy mists, one designed to repel "psychic vampires" and another called "Chill Child: Kid Calming Mist." In my tests, they seemed to all smell the same.

If you want to see for yourself, the shop opened November 15 and is a permanent brick-and-mortar as opposed to a temporary pop-up. If not, you can catch some more Goop content on Netflix as part of a series originally slated to release in late 2019.

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