Beauty counters occupied the ground floor of American department stores for most of a century. Their decline and relocation followed from what the format actually delivered to brands.
The ground floor was bought, not given
Cosmetics generated high margins in a small footprint, which made the ground floor the most productive space in the building and justified the rent it commanded.
Brands did not simply lease space, they staffed it, supplied fixtures and often paid for the personnel who sold their products under the store's roof.
That arrangement gave the store reliable income and gave the brand direct control over presentation, which was worth a great deal before other channels existed.
The counter's real function was demonstration
Color cosmetics and fragrance are difficult to buy sight unseen, because shade, texture and scent cannot be conveyed adequately by a printed description.
A staffed counter solved that by letting a customer test on skin and receive an assessment from someone trained to match products to what they were looking at.
The floor space existed to house that interaction, so any channel that could replicate demonstration and advice was a direct threat to the format.
Specialty retail unbundled the offer
Stores dedicated to beauty brought many brands into one open space where products could be handled without approaching a representative of any single one.
That removed the pressure customers associated with counters while preserving testing, and it added the ability to compare across brands in a single trip.
Department stores could not easily match it, because their counters were structured around brand-controlled territory rather than open comparison.
Online channels absorbed the rest
Sampling programs, virtual shade tools and video demonstration reduced the uncertainty that had kept beauty purchases anchored to physical stores.
Reviews from other buyers also substituted, imperfectly, for the advice a counter representative supplied, and they were available without a trip.
What remains difficult online is scent and precise shade matching for foundation, which is why those categories retain the strongest pull toward physical testing.
What the shift changed about products
Counter selling favored complex products that benefited from explanation, since a trained representative could justify a price through a demonstration.
Open-shelf and online selling favor products that communicate through packaging and short description, which rewards simpler propositions and clearer claims.
The extensive shade ranges now common are partly a consequence, because a customer selecting unaided needs the range to do the matching that a person once did.