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Soho accessories store entices Valentine’s Day shoppers with jewelry kiosk

Marla Aaron, a jewelry designer, developed a vending kiosk to sell jewelry, which has generated interest in a museum, a hotel garden and now a women's accessories store.

The Marla Aaron jewelry kiosk offers items ranging from $125 to $1,739 at the MZ Wallace store.

February 13, 2019 by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times

This Valentine's Day, shoppers at the MZ Wallace store in the Soho neighborhood of New York will have a chance to peruse and buy Marla Aaron designer jewelry from a custom-built kiosk. 

Shoppers will be romanced not only by images of Aaron's meticulously designed necklaces on the kiosk's digital screen, but also by a video of young children reciting Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare:

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

MZ Wallace, a company specializing in upscale totes and handbags for women, planned to hold a reception the evening before Valentine's Day to celebrate the jewelry kiosk's one-month anniversary in the store, said Sarah Broach, director of communication for MZ Wallace.

Aaron and MZ Wallace co-founder Lucy Wallace are longtime friends who share a passion for jewelry.

In search of the unusual

Wallace and co-founder Monica Zwirner wanted to add some novelty to their store with the kiosk, Broach told Kiosk Marketplace.

Marla Aaron shares jewelry with Lucy Wallace and Monica Zwirner at the MZ Wallace store.

"It's very easy to get people to look at it because they are very intrigued by it," Broach said. "It's just so unexpected to have fine jewelry in a vending machine. People are really enjoying playing with the machine."

The kiosk also allows MZ Wallace and Aaron to cross-market their products, Broach said. "There's a nice exchange there of brands collaborating," she said "We are at a time when brands can be friends."

Aaron, for her part, thought the stylish displays of totes and handbags at MZ Wallace made an excellent environment for her kiosk, which debuted at the Brooklyn Museum in 2017 before moving to an outdoor garden at the William Vale Hotel in 2018. 

For Aaron, the kiosk, whose exterior features artistic renderings of locks and chains, is the latest phase in her mission to make her designer jewelry accessible to consumers.

"The MZ Wallace brand of chic utility is very much aligned with ours, so having it in their beautiful Soho store as its first Manhattan location was ideal," Aaron wrote in an email to Kiosk Marketplace. 

Broach did not want to reveal sales figures, but said that several customers have bought products from the machine, which offers 10 different necklaces and a bracelet. She said Aaron's company has restocked the machine as needed.

Shakespeare in the store

"The videos are part of the overall experience and opportunity to share something unexpected with our customers, and we change them for every installation," Aaron said. 

"The current one is a love letter to Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 about unconditional love — recited by children — that we had produced by the award-winning creative agency, Something Different, and it is our Valentine's Day message that is running on the machine and across various channels." 

The digital screen also guides the customer through the purchase process. The jewelry pieces range from $125 to $1,739, payable by credit card, and are dispensed in a suede pouch inside of a cardboard box tied with a ribbon.

The kiosk has attracted a fair amount of media attention, thanks to the novelty of offering designer jewelry in a self-serve kiosk. 

Japan inspires her

Aaron got the idea of designing a kiosk to sell her jewelry three years ago when visiting Japan, a nation that has a vending machine for nearly everything.

"I was struck by the variety of vending machines and the different objects that were sold in them," Aaron said. "On the plane ride home I was already researching how to build one for us. I believed that creating an unexpected experience for our customer through a vending machine would be special, and we could not be more thrilled with the reaction."

Aaron did not wish to disclose information about the machine's technology, except to say that it has 24-hour camera surveillance and remote machine auditing. She said the technology has been helpful from a customer engagement and marketing perspective.

"We can always see what is happening in the machine," she said. "The way customers interact with it, the types of pieces they buy, the amount of time they spend with it, the things they choose to share about their experience with it on social media — are all pieces of information that help us optimize our work across every dimension. The vending machine is a microcosm of the way a customer discovers us, and that is invaluable."

Aaron said all the machine placements — in a museum, a hotel garden and a retail store — have been successful. "I can say without exception that they were all wonderful and offered us distinct insights into how people interact with our brand through the machine," she said. 

Aaron expects to add more machines and expand to other countries. "The vending machine will play an even bigger role in our strategy as we grow," she said. 

Photos courtesy of Marla Aaron.

About Elliot Maras

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Elliot Maras is the editor of Kiosk Marketplace and Vending Times. He brings three decades covering unattended retail and commercial foodservice.