Amazon’s beauty sale was a mixed bag for some brands

Amazon generally doesn’t disclose sales figures for its sales events, including the Holiday Beauty Haul. But brands and agencies that spoke to Modern Retail for this story reported tepid performance metrics, especially compared to Amazon’s bigger, splashier Prime Day events. Brands cited a range of reasons. Some of it boiled down to inconvenient timing, as brands had already participated in Amazon’s October sale. Others said the event isn’t marketed as prominently as Amazon’s other promotions. 

“We were content with the performance of the promotion,” said Jess Curdi, vp of digital marketing at The Rootist, a hair care brand. “It didn’t knock our socks off.”

‘A little overkill’ 

While the event is smaller, with less awareness and engagement, compared to a mainstay Prime Day event, Amazon’s Holiday Beauty Haul is an opportunity for the e-commerce giant to assert its growing dominance in the beauty category, a fast-growing area of its online shopping business. It’s also an opportune time for the company to kick off the holiday season, as beauty products are highly giftable items. Even as shoppers pull back on discretionary spending, people have continued to splurge on premium beauty labels. 

Still, the timing of the event, which placed it on the heels of Amazon’s October Prime sale, which ran from Oct. 8 and Oct. 9, was suboptimal to some brands. As such, many brands chose not to participate and decided to hold off for bigger tentpole occasions like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Front Row Group, an e-commerce accelerator that works with beauty brands, including Ouai and Bubble Beauty, said its clients did not participate in the sale. 

“Most of our brands just felt that it was a little bit overkill to be so close between those other sales,” according to Emily Safian-Demers, director of consumer insights at Front Row.

Modern Retail previously reported how brands are increasingly feeling pressured by “deal fatigue,” as marketplaces and retailers run a host of parallel sales from July 4 until the end of the year. Phil Masiello, CEO of revenue acceleration agency Crunchgrowth, agreed, although he said his clients still chose to participate.

“It’s like a love-hate relationship,” he said. “Everyone complains about deal fatigue, but at the same time it’s what drives your sales, especially this time of year when everyone is so focused on deals.”

Ela Rasmussen, vp of partner services at SuperOrdinary, a brand accelerator that manages the Amazon presence for beauty brands, said she felt Amazon in the future should advertise the event as heavily as they do Prime Day events to drive traffic. 

“For Amazon to really make the Holiday Beauty Haul exceptional, they really need to do some of that additional amplification that they’ve done with the other events, especially in a time that we are so heavily promotional,” Rasmussen said. “It’s almost like Cyber Quarter at this point.”

Amazon announces the dates for its summer Prime Day event almost a month in advance to build anticipation. The e-commerce giant confirmed as early as April that it would hold another Prime Day sale in July 2024. By comparison, Amazon announced the return of its beauty sale in mid-October after its fall Prime event. Amazon also leveraged the star power of celebrities like Cardi B to market its summer sales event to consumers.

More amplification would likely encourage more brands to participate and discount more products during the sales event, Rasmussen said. This year, many clients chose to focus on promoting sales on their direct-to-consumer sites instead. 

As such, SuperOrdinary took a conservative approach to discounting during the beauty sale. “We wanted to be really selective with the SKUs that we offered for this particular event because we just had participation in fall Prime,” she said. “During this quarter, you can easily burn through way too much promotional budget.”

Rasmussen prioritized brand awareness for SuperOrdinary’s client Kora Organics during the event by discounting only one of its top-performing products rather than a range of SKUs or the entire product catalog. Kora Organics saw conversion rise 15% this year compared to last year’s sale. Interestingly, only 25% of paying customers used the coupon that was offered to them. “That could be attributed to the low visibility of the event for the Amazon shopper,” Rasmussen said. 

Still, Masiello said he thought this year’s Holiday Beauty Haul had gained more awareness among consumers than in years past. Overall, brand clients that participated saw year-over-year sales growth compared to last year’s sale. Anecdotally, he said he saw more discussion of the sale online, including videos of affiliates hawking products on sale, compared to years ago. Still, the event is not as popular or as well-known as Amazon’s Prime Day events, he said.

Like SuperOrdinary, The Rootist also took a conservative approach to discounting during Amazon’s beauty-focused sale in order to differentiate it from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when the brand plans to discount its entire product catalog. 

It can be challenging for a new brand like The Rootist, which launched at the beginning of 2024, to build brand loyalty at a time when consumers are laser-focused on bargains, Curdi said. Yet, despite Amazon’s emphasis on deals, The Rootist said it’s still an important channel to raise brand awareness. That said, the brand is prioritizing its wholesale relationship with Sephora to drive sales overall, even as Amazon has hustled to grow its portfolio of beauty brands by courting more labels, including Clinique and Lancôme.

“At this time of year, consumers aren’t interested in anything else. There’s no selling them a dream, really,” Curdi said. “It’s just about the discount.”