Kiehl’s

The cream and blue shop at the corner of Third Avenue and 13th Street in Manhattan has been trading skincare since 1851. L'Oreal paid over $100 million for that corner. Kiehl's began as an apothecary opened by John Kiehl in Manhattan's East Village in 1851. The Moore's family took ownership in the 1920s and ran it as an old-fashioned chemists until Jamie Moore's Heidegger expanded it into cosmetics through the 1980s with products like the ultra-facial moisturizer. L'Oreal acquired the brand in 2000 for a reported $150 million, keeping the original apothecary aesthetic and the generous free sample policy intact at every new location worldwide. The apothecary styling is the brand. Every Kiehl's store, wherever it opens, uses the same cream-tiled floors, glass dropper bottles, Swiss motorcycle displays, and lab-coated staff handing out free samples.