Watsons China has opened its 3000th store, in Shanghai Super Brand Mall.

It features the brand’s latest store format, which expresses Watsons as a modern health-and-beauty retail brand with heritage.

Two services launch in the new store, “Style Me” and “Skin Test”. Using augmented reality-enabled (AR) technology, “Style Me” offers a virtual make-up service and product recommendations, while “Skin Test” gives skincare advice using biometric data.

Another feature of the store is its offering for Watsons China mobile app customers. Its “Ask Me” service offers video-conferencing for consultations with beauty advisers, while “Scan Me” allows for instant answers to product questions about scanned purchases.

The app can also advise users of promotions in nearby Watsons stores.

Watsons loyalty club has more than 60 million members in China, and it is about to launch an electronic membership card that offers an around-the-clock O2O (Online-to-Offline) service.

“China has always been a strategic market,” says AS Watson Group group MD Dominic Lai, who notes that its China customers are the youngest on average among all its markets.

The group plans to continue its expansion in 25 markets, and expects to reach the milestone of its 14,000th store worldwide in the fourth quarter of this year, says Lai.

Watsons has more than 6000 stores, including 1500 pharmacies, in Asia and Europe including Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines.