Sloomoo Institute, the ultimate slime museum, is opening its fifth location in the heart of Los Angeles, marking its first big move on the West Coast.
The company’s highly immersive sensory experience is beloved in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston and New York City, but Co-founder and Co-CEO Karen Robinovitz believes this new location is the company’s most creatively innovative to date.
The 13,000-square-foot space was formerly a Sony IMAX theater, which means it has “really majestic ceilings, about 30 feet high,” Robinovitz said. The Sloomoo Institute team knew it had to lean heavily into this magnificence if they wanted to make a big splash on the LA scene.
“Now is the right time for LA because we weren’t prepared to go this big until now,” Robinovitz admitted. “And when I say big, it’s not [just] about the size of the space but the impression that LA has on the national presence of a brand. It means you’re officially bi-coastal and it’s a very national, even international, market in terms of how many people travel there and commute back and forth.”
For example, Robinovitz and her team knew immediately that they had to make the all-gray building a bold magenta, Sloomoo’s signature color. “The fact that we have the building this color serves as out-of-home advertising at the same time, because the traffic on the street cannot be beat.”
Sloomoo worked with Method Design, its architectural partner for all locations, to develop the overarching design concepts for different themed rooms. One room is an homage to the Beverly Hills Hotel, while another ties visually to the beach vibes of Malibu.
Robinovitz noted that the design and experience teams “really pushed” themselves from an architectural design perspective, largely because of the natural makeup of the space. Walls slope and undulate, creating an opportunity for new visual elements to reveal themselves “in a way that mimics all the slime drizzling down,” Robinovitz said. “It’s awe-inspiring to see this sinuous movement in such a huge space with massive ceilings.” The resulting design and architectural language “is a culmination of all our ideas [in all locations],” she added.
Creating a ‘La-La Land’-Worthy Impression
Some of Sloomoo Institute’s most beloved fixtures are in the LA space, including Sloomoo & Repeat, which many visitors know as the “slime wall,” a slime slingshot, a 500-gallon “lake” of cloud slime that patrons can walk through, and an improved DIY slime bar that allows people to have more control over the colors and fragrances they use to customize their slime. However, the team made a point to include some new vignettes and activities unique to LA.
“Part of our strategy is adding elements that are signature to the city — something that only lives there,” Robinovitz said.
Groov’s Grove is an interactive sonic journey where guests can create their own sounds as they venture through the space — an ode to LA’s entertainment and wellness roots. “Groov is one of our characters, our meditation- and music-loving figure,” Robinovitz said. “If anyone would enjoy that very LA, ‘green juice life,’ it would be Groov.”
The focal point of the space is an installation by artist Randy Palumbo, a “kaleidoscopic, reflective, immersive room of all mirrors and aluminum, with built-in Tibetan singing bowls that are sounding off alongside a symphony of purple, pink and blue lights,” Robinovitz explained. “You can activate the singing bowls by pressing doorbells, so it becomes interactive. It’s a place to simmer into sound and have a sonic journey, a very signature and iconic LA moment. It’s outside of the language of slime, but adjacent to our world, so it’s really about tapping into your senses.”
Other LA-exclusive elements include:
- Sloomoowood, where visitors can imprint their hands into a sidewalk-inspired slime installation reminiscent of the Hollywood Walk of Fame;
- Stoodio, a dedicated space where content creators and influencers can take pics against 16 custom backgrounds; and
- A DJ booth elevated 10 feet above the crowd that will set a musical vibe for the space.
Fighting Hard for an LA Location that Actually has Foot Traffic
Sloomoo Institute’s real estate approach is equal parts data-driven strategy and “vibes,” according to Robinovitz. “There’s always an intuition and sensibility of a city, but we will constantly back it up with the data, such as the population, percent of families, tourist attractions and visitorship over the course of the year.”
LA checked all these boxes; plus, the leadership team “always dreamed of being in LA,” said Robinovitz. But the building itself, at 157 Fairfax Avenue, provided an incredible canvas for Sloomoo Institute to visually tell its brand story. In fact, the company embarked on an 18-month-long negotiation process to ensure it won this space. “We were looking at other spaces, but we knew we could not beat this location,” said Robinovitz.
A big (yet simple) reason is the natural foot traffic and its closeness to key family-oriented landmarks. “It’s an iconic location across the street from the Grove and the farmer’s market, and it’s a location that has a lot of foot traffic, which is uncommon for LA because everybody drives,” Robinovitz explained. “You’re naturally getting a lot of people who will see the space.”
In addition to The Grove and the farmer’s market, the new Sloomoo Institute is in proximity to a Trader Joe’s, an Erewhon and Sidecar Doughnuts, which is considered a Los Angeles institution.
A Future in Show Biz?
Because LA is the nation’s most well-known entertainment hub, Robinovitz and her co-founder Sara Schiller believed that this would be the ideal time to bring the brand’s IP to life, including a mascot that has been making an appearance in content, email marketing and physical spaces as a nine-foot blow-up character. “Putting ourselves in LA really sets up for our future in entertainment. We were not ready for that before,” she admitted.
In the near term, Sloomoo Institute is further embedding itself into the entertainment world by doubling down on parties. The location has three VIP party rooms that can each hold up to 40 people, so the company is courting celebrities, influencers and other “brand friendlies” who want to host birthday parties and other events. This also is the first location to have a dedicated events team to support this growing side of the business.
