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Beauty

How Beauty Brands Can Pick the Right Retail Partner

With a growing number of retailers looking to stock cosmetics, skin care and more on their shelves, brands have to think harder about which fulfils their needs.
Ulta Beauty is one of several retailers emerging brands have to choose from.
Ulta Beauty is one of several retailers emerging brands have to choose from. (Ulta Beauty)
By
BoF PROFESSIONAL

When Loops, a face mask-focussed skin care brand, first launched at the end of 2020, it exclusively sold through its direct-to-consumer channels. After all, the pandemic was raging and in-store shopping was, if not closed entirely, still severely limited.

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Further Reading

Who Is Allowed to Sell Skin Care?

A slew of new entrants, from indies to LVMH-owned giants, are jumping from makeup into skin and “hybrid” concepts. But the road to skin care equity is harder than it looks.

Why It’s So Hard for Fashion Retailers to Succeed in Beauty

It’s hard to break into beauty, on or offline, even if you’re owned by Amazon. As retailers from Trader Joe’s to Moda try to establish dominance in a category with endless points of distribution, it takes more than just populating your site or shelves with bottles and tubes of skin care to get shoppers to see you as a viable seller of beauty. It takes authority, and usually, exclusive focus (Sephora and Ulta Beauty aren’t trying to sell fashion, after all).

About the author
Diana Pearl
Diana Pearl

Diana Pearl is Senior News and Features Editor at The Business of Fashion. She is based in New York and drives BoF’s marketing and media coverage.

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