It looks like a grocery store, complete with refrigerator shelves and a glass deli case. However, instead of ham and cheese, it is stocked with beauty supplies.

Welcome to Beauty Emporium, one of several one-stop beauty shops springing up around town. The store is the newest addition to the home-grown Spa Esprit Group of grooming and lifestyle brands.

The 17,000 sq ft store is located within House, Spa Esprit’s complex in laid-back Dempsey Road, which also has a restaurant and bar, among others.

The idea behind the emporium’s deli-counter approach is to allow customers to pick and choose from a range of products and services according to their needs, says Cynthia Chua, the group’s managing director.

Customers can also go for a range of grooming services, from facials to bikini waxes, offered by other Spa Esprit-owned beauty chains.

Such one-stop beauty shops are becoming the rage these days, as time-pressed customers demand convenience above all else.

Vinn Wong, creative director of Action Hair Salon, says: “Customers like to have everything under one roof so that they do not have to drive from one location to another to get made up.”

The salon relocated to a larger space in Paragon in April to accommodate a hair spa and facial treatment cabins.

At least four other one-stop shops – including LS Philosophy, which comprises a spa, hair salon and gastrobar, and international multi-brand cosmetics store Sephora, which is home to Singapore’s first Bliss spa – have opened over the last year.

No wonder too – half to 90 per cent of customers at these all-in-one stores sign up for multiple services each time they visit, the owners tell Urban.

“I’ve noticed an increasing number of customers coming in for two or more services over the last five years,” says June Ng, founder of J’s Salon at Goodwood Park Hotel.

The hair salon became one of the first beauty havens in Singapore when Ng began offering manicures/pedicures as well as foot reflexology services in 1995.

Today, J’s Salon is home to a Lancome Institute, which offers facials and body treatments, as well as a Kerastase hair spa.

Keep in mind that with these multi-tasking havens making it so easy to go from one service to another, you may find yourself signing up for two or more services all at once without even realising it.

Urban checks out five one-stop wonders we could spend all day in, if only we had the time.

karentee@sph.com.sg

This article was first published in Urban, The Straits Times.