Amazon Plans for a Beauty Products Event Next Month

In an effort to attract early holiday shoppers, e-commerce giant Amazon is planning for a beauty products event in October.

According to documents reviewed by CNBC, the company will hold a beauty sales event for three weeks starting on October 4th.

The Amazon event is designed to lure consumers before the holiday shopping season kicks off and help make Amazon a go-to destination for beauty and personal care items.

A slide deck was sent to select beauty brands and the same information was also sent to some consulting firms that help manage businesses on the Amazon platform.

“We want to draw customers back to Amazon during Black Friday week but also long term with additional marketing levers,” Amazon wrote in the slide deck. “This is a unique opportunity for selected brands to reach both more shoppers and new customers.”

Catie Kroon, an Amazon spokesperson, confirmed the authenticity of the document.

Speaking to CNBC by email, Kroon said that the event next month will be called “Holiday Beauty Haul” and added that the site will feature a number of product types, including fragrance, men’s grooming and winter skin care.

Online makeup sales exploded 40% in 2020 from a year earlier, while sales of “self-care” items such as shampoo, face wash products and lotions climbed 59%, according to market research firm
1010data.

The company began reaching out to beauty brands and consulting firms in mid-August to gauge participation in the event, said Jed Rawson, CEO of e-commerce consulting agency Pirawna.

Kroon said beauty is one of the fastest-growing categories on Amazon and that it’s “ripe for innovation” when it comes to product discovery and presentation. Amazon is “uniquely positioned to reinvent” the experience of buying beauty products online,” she wrote in an e-mail to CNBC.

The October event could also help Amazon better compete with retailers such as Ulta Beauty and LVMH-owned Sephora, said Elaine Kwon. Kwon had served as a vendor manager in Amazon’s fashion category and now runs Kwontified, an e-commerce management and software company.

Kwon said Amazon has tried to boost its market share by featuring more leading brands on its site and experimenting with features such as a “clean beauty” tag.

“Sephora and Ulta have very, very successfully protected their customer base,” Kwon said. “This is Amazon’s way of trying to reach out to those customers and give them a great experience that makes them think, ‘Maybe I don’t have to go to Sephora for all of these things, maybe I can go to Amazon for this or that.’”

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.