Retail Report
Erica La Sala
Premium beauty brands won big during Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days last week.
Sol de Janeiro’s Cheirosa 62 Perfume Mist, Laura Geller’s Balance-N-Brighten Powder, Grande Lash’s Enhancing Serum, Anastasia Beverly Hills’s Brow Wiz Pencil and Laneige’s Lip Glowy Balm and Lip Sleeping Mask were a few of the bestselling beauty products during the two-day shopping event that took place on October 8 and 9, according to data tracked by Amazon agencies Market Defense and Envision Horizons.
Shoppers also snapped up premium products from hair wellness brand Nutrafol and skincare brands Innisfree and Sulwhasoo. Based on a consumer survey of 5,000 shoppers from consumer data firm Numerator, beauty was the fourth most popular category on Amazon’s Prime Big Deals Days, trialing household essentials, apparel and footwear and home goods.
Shopper demand for premium beauty products is driving Amazon’s mounting investment in the category. Over the past two years, prestige brands that once shunned the e-commerce giant have been enthusiastically jumping on it. Lancome, Shiseido, Clinique, Too Faced, Bumble and bumble, Smashbox, Kiehl’s, Youth to the People and emerging brand Evolvetogether have recently established storefronts on Amazon.
By 2025, Amazon’s beauty business is expected to surpass Walmart’s.Last year, it sold over 1 billion beauty products to 100 million-plus beauty customers in the United States. The same year, over 100 million customers visited Amazon each month. It currently has over 230 million customers in the U.S.
“Amazon continues to invest in premium and luxury beauty to make the highest demand brands available on a mass scale, and Prime Big Deal Days showcased that,” says Taylar Allan, account manager at Envision Horizons. “Large discounts of 25% or more from some of the most recognizable brands led to double digit category growth in foundation, lip oils and tints, and mascara to name a few.” He adds, “We expect continued increase in demand…for the beauty category.” According to Salesforce, beauty brands’ discounted their products by an average of 20% during the event.
Vanessa Kuykendall, chief engagement officer at Market Defense, agrees that beauty is in a strong position on Amazon going into the busiest trading season of the year. “Outside of beauty, October Prime was less about fun. Sixty percent of shoppers bought essential household items from legacy brands, while only 35% went for holiday gifts,” she says. “This primes us for a strong holiday season ahead as beauty shoppers still have gifts to buy and Amazon’s impulse-buying audience is ready to splurge.”
Mass and masstige beauty brands gained traction with shoppers during Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days, too. CeraVe, La Roche Posay, Hero Cosmetics, E.l.f., Essence Cosmetics and Maybelline were among the top-ranked beauty brands during last week’s event. For comparison, Sol de Janeiro, Laneige, CeraVe, Crest and COSRX were beauty’s top performers during Amazon’s two-day Prime Day event in July, according to Envision Horizons.
The top-searched skincare keywords during last week’s Prime event were “laneige,” “pimple patches” and “cerave face wash.” Meanwhile, shoppers tapped “makeup,” “mascara” and “lip gloss” into their keyboards when searching for makeup. Tellingly, “sol de janeiro” was a top-searched keyword for both October and July sales events.
With Amazon’s Holiday Beauty Haul and Black Friday coming shortly, brands are getting choosier about the events they participate in on Amazon. Fewer beauty brands in Envision’s portfolio participated in last week’s Prime Big Deals Days event than during Prime Day in July, which Allan attributes to “discount fatigue.” He notes, “We’re seeing three large tentpole events in a seven-week period, and the duration of the deals are longer than they have ever been in the past.”
Two years after introducing a second annual Prime event to its calendar, Amazon touts this year’s Prime Big Deals Days was its biggest October shopping event yet. While it didn’t provide a final tally of sales, it stated that Prime members saved more than $1 billion across millions of deals offered for the sales event.
According to Numerator’s survey, 46% of Amazon Prime Big Deals Days shoppers purchased items they’d been waiting to buy on sale. Twenty-seven percent of shoppers were on the hunt for everyday essentials and 21% stocked up on discounted items.
Outside of Amazon, Salesforce reported that online traffic in the U.S. dipped 2% and online orders 4% for the two days that encompassed the sales event as Americans across the Southeast contended with the destruction caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton. Despite the traffic decline, Adobe forecast online spending in the U.S. would reach $8.6 billion during Amazon’s latest sales event, representing a 7.2% year-over-year gain.
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