TCM meets aromatherapy with MadeToBloom’s first offline store

This week, local beauty brand MadeToBloom makes its first foray into offline retail with a launch at TANGS, marking a new milestone for the young self-care brand that has until now been available primarily online. This debut at the department store goes beyond the presence of MadeToBloom products on the self, and serves as a way for the brand to reconnect with the offline pop-up booths and in-person events that initially got it off its footing.

MadeToBloom’s primary draw is its use of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) ingredients, integrated with aromatherapy for a more pleasant experience than many traditional remedies typically offer. This makes its offline presence especially useful. For customers unfamiliar with the brand, or who may have had negative experiences with TCM products in the past, physical retail offers the opportunity for a tactile encounter, where scent, texture, and the products themselves can help speak for the brand.

A simple glance through MadeToBloom’s website shows the brand’s cohesive image. Each product shot features green bottles with elegant minimalist logos, swathed in florals, calling to mind nature — and the natural beauty the brand hopes to support through its hair and body care lineup.

The three founders, Billy Rosh Wee, Claire Yeo, and Ysabel Wee started the brand with the simple goal of elevating the daily shower. They all shared an appreciation for TCM and a desire to create products to add a simple, and effective self-care ritual to consumer’s schedules, integrated into a task they already did daily. The idea was to blend the proven effectiveness of traditional herbs with the sensory appeal of aromatherapy.

While aromatherapy helped position the brand within the self-care space they hoped to inhabit, it also served a functional purpose of making the products more pleasant to use. After all, while tools like gua sha or jade rollers have gained popularity in the skincare world, TCM ingredients themselves remain less mainstream. Traditional remedies often bring to mind strong smells or bitter flavours — associations that can be difficult to market to modern consumers. Additionally, there are still a fair amount of people who remain sceptical about TCM.

To assuage these concerns, MadeToBloom puts traditional TCM ingredients, like ginger and Platycladus Orientalis Leaf Extract, under modern R&D trials. Each product undergoes safety, stability, and quality testing, and is formulated without sulphates, parabens, or phthalates, made so that they are suitable even for pregnant and breastfeeding users.

Still, building recognition hasn’t been easy. In a beauty industry dominated by global conglomerates, visibility for a homegrown startup is hard-won. Without large marketing budgets, MadeToBloom has grown steadily through word-of-mouth, thoughtful design, and carefully curated pop-up booths that doubled as brand storytelling experiences.

The entry into TANGS offers a more permanent version of that approach. With greater foot traffic and the opportunity to reach customers beyond its digital base, the brand is hoping to build deeper connections with new audiences — just as they did at in-person events.

“Our vision is for MadeToBloom to be more than just a personal care brand. We want it to be a platform that bridges heritage and innovation, and redefines what modern self-care looks like in an Asian context,” said Yeo.

“We’ll continue to explore new formulations and product categories, expand regionally, and grow both our online and offline presence. But at the core, our goal remains the same: to create thoughtful, effective products that help people feel their best, whether that’s through healthier scalp and hair, a more enjoyable shower ritual, or simply knowing they’ve chosen something that helps them love the person they’ve become, every single day.”

For now, the launch at TANGS marks a notable step forward, clearly showing MadeToBloom’s strength in its clarity of purpose, faith in its product, and its patience to grow through substance and testimony rather than scale alone.