Amazon is now a growing destination to shop for luxury cosmetics online. While top sellers in the mass cosmetics marketplace are losing market share, luxury cosmetics actually grew as much as 51% year to year inside Amazon online marketplace.
Yet the online leader “Amazon” has not been able to attract major retail luxury brands to sell inside their online marketplace. Where most luxury brands still refuse to sell luxury goods directly on Amazon. Generally, merchandise by luxury brands being sold on Amazon is through a licensed relationship and not sold directly from the luxury brand.
One Click Retail is the industry leader when it comes to collecting eCommerce data measurement, sales analytics and search optimization for brand manufacturers in North America and Europe. One Click Retail Product Suite provides 1st and 3rd party business intelligence across the largest online retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Macy’s, and Home Depot. Their clients include the world’s top brands such as Procter & Gamble, Panasonic, Nestle, Philips, and Sony that rely on One Click Retail insights to drive sales and profitability across eCommerce.
What would make a new luxury cosmetics brand want to sell inside the Amazon online marketplace?
Curly D by Curly Davenport offers Jutuex a luxury natural lip balm oil. This product is achieving great success by being sold online as a facelift for lips in a tube. In addition, their two other offerings Sunset Crush and Pink Coco both luxury natural tint lip balm oil options are doing very well online. However, for now the products are only sold exclusively via CurlyDavenport.com’s online mobile site.
Pink Coco from Curly D by Curly Davenport featured via Mosnar Communications
While Curly D hasn’t ruled out selling inside Amazon’s online marketplace in the near future. Having data like One Click Retail presents better solutions to evaluate ways to increase revenue earnings potential.
According to CR Cataunya Ransom, Curly D’s co-founder “Year to year growth for luxury cosmetics brands inside the Amazon online marketplace has sparked interest to start preparing to sell on Amazon in the future.”
However, Ransom stresses as an emerging natural and organic luxury beauty brand they must have a strategic digital marketing strategy in place to sell luxury cosmetics on Amazon in place first.
Luxury Cosmetics To Buy On Amazon Now
For Luxury Cosmetics on Amazon, it is important to note that this category is still in its initial growth phase: a considerable amount of the growth in this category correlates to brands entering the space as first-party sellers, rather than brands already present on Amazon growing significantly. Consequently, the top brands from 2016 saw a dramatic loss in market share, not necessarily because they were outperformed, but because the number of major competitors increased in 2017.
US sales of Mass Cosmetics on Amazon reached $110 million in 2017, up 45% compared with 2016, with the top 5 selling mass cosmetics brands (and their share of total mass cosmetics sales on Amazon.com) being:
- Maybelline (12%)
- L’Oréal (11%)
- Wunderbrow (8%)
- COVERGIRL (5%)
- Burt’s Bees (4%)
Top-seller Maybelline slipped 1% in overall market share but experienced a 25% YoY growth; while L’Oréal retained the #2 spot with a 41% YoY growth. As more cosmetics brands enter the 1P Amazon space, incumbents are feeling the pinch and this is even more evident in the Luxury Cosmetics space.
In 2016, the top 5 selling luxury cosmetics brands owned close to 80% of the market share on Amazon.com. In 2017, the top selling brands’ market share dropped just under 60%, with the top 5 being:
Paula Okunzuwa for jane iredale featured via Mosnar Communications
- jane iredale (20%)
- stila (15%)
- RevitaLash (11%)
- LORAC (7%)
- Blinc (6%)
“With both the Mass and Luxury segments of Cosmetics growing at more than 40% and 50% year-over-year on Amazon, brands big and small are beginning to embrace an Amazon-first strategy,” explains Spencer Millerberg, One Click Retail CEO. “Consumers are shopping for everything they can on Amazon, in one trip. When they’re purchasing on Amazon, they’re purchasing as much as they can. And if they can buy their luxury items at the same time as their everyday essentials and big-ticket items, they’ll do it. Brands from across all categories begun significantly in 2017 to take notice and take control of their Amazon presence.”
Notable YoY shifts in Luxury Cosmetics brands on Amazon.com:
jane iredale dropped 8% in YoY market share but retained the top spot
RevitaLash soared to #3 with 11% market share, compared to a negligible rank in 2016
Elizabeth Arden inched up to #7 from #9 and captured 5% market share
Dermablend, entering the 1P Luxury Cosmetics space on Amazon in 2017, climbed to #8 with a 4% market share. Colorescience and Jouer, both small brands, rounded out the top 10 with 3% market share each, having climbed 6 and 3 spots respectively from 2016.
The Mass Cosmetics market on Amazon did not experience such drastic YoY shifts as the Luxury segment; however, notable YoY growth did occur in the top selling brands:
Wunderbrow, which grew 66% YoY, remained at #3 but only a few points behind the leaders Maybelline and L’Oréal. Both COVERGIRL and Burt’s Bees jumped 3 spots each to #4 and #5, with a respective 60% and 55% YoY growth. Revlon’s soaring 83% YoY growth only brings the brand up to #8, compared to #10 in 2016.
One Click Retail was acquired by Ascential plc in 2016. For more information, visit the company’s website, www.oneclickretail.com