Build Your Own Birchbox (BYOB) at Birchbox

While strolling through SOHO (strolling may not be the right word…I had tired arms with heavy shopping bags hitting my knees) on the lookout for Ladureé and Dominique Ansel for afternoon snacks, I came across the Birchbox flagship store and decided to step in to see what they had in stock!

Birchbox Soho Store — View of the store from the BYOB area

Upon walking in, the bright white walls were neatly lined with shelves of beauty products familiar to Birchbox subscribers, like COOLA sunscreen, BeautyBlender, and other favorites. A quick walk downstairs leads you to a nice selection of women’s hair products and a wide selection of men’s products.

But we have to talk about the best part of the store. The most notable part of the flagship store? The coolest, most exciting, you-have-to-visit-if-you’re-a-Birchbox-fan-because-this-is-way-too-cool part? The Build-Your-Own-Birchbox or BYOB section.

The BYOB section has a wide selection of samples with everything you see on Birchbox (dry shampoo, nail polish, moisturizers, you name it). For only $10, you get to add 5 samples of whatever you would like!

BYOB (Build Your Own Birchbox) at Birchbox Flagship in SOHO

You can see in the photo above that they have men’s and women’s products separated and categorized, with sample offerings in hair, makeup, body, nail, skincare, and fragrance.

Even though I’m an ongoing monthly Birchbox subscriber, I found the BYOB section to be AMAZING! Why, you ask? You can try out products that maybe wouldn’t be recommended to you based on your beauty profile, and you can physically hold the samples and view them before you add them to your box.

I loaded my box with these five samples:

Since I was traveling, I thought picking up dry shampoo and cleansing waters would be the best idea for me.

Birchbox BYOB Samples

Usually, a monthly Birchbox includes a variety of products––a perfume sample, skincare sample, cosmetics sample, etc. At the BYOB section, you don’t have to pick one product within each category. You could take home 5 mascaras, 5 dry shampoos, or 5 of whatever you want…well, I’m not sure that’s the policy BUT they didn’t stop me from picking up three cleansing waters/makeup removers!

There’s someone behind the counter who will give you more information on the samples and answer any questions, but there wasn’t anyone behind the counter when I went…which was totally okay by me because I wanted to take my sweet time touching all the samples!

So If you’re in SOHO and you’re a Birchbox fan, stopping by the flagship store (even if just for the BYOB section) is totally worth it!