Amazon, one step away from surpassing Shepora in the competitive cosmetics industry and becoming the main beauty and personal care marketplace

Amazon continues in its particular war against all the giants for being the king of the marketplace in all segments. Its latest victim, the beauty and personal care line where it is going head to head with (and winning) big ships like Ulta Beauty and Sephora as a priority option for consumers who want to buy in this segment.

The global e-commerce giant has doubled its volume of activity in recent years, with a bet on success boosting its catalog with independent and prestigious beauty brands, as well as promoting exclusive agreements with major international celebrities such as Lady Gaga.

This effort by Jeff Bezos's flagship is paying off, as has been the trend in his business strategy for many years. The beauty and personal care category is already one of the segments in which the company is growing the fastest. Not surprisingly, it was one of the best-selling categories on Amazon Prime Day 2021 that it celebrated last week, according to the company itself.

Such was the demand that it became the second-highest-volume category for out-of-stock items, closely following Amazon Kindle and Alexa-branded devices, according to a survey by Blue Yonder.

Although the marketplace has made a belated and recent bet on this market segment, Amazon believes it is "uniquely positioned to reinvent" the experience of shopping for cosmetics and personal care items. The beauty market is, of course, a very sweet tooth in business terms: it is expected to reach more than 380,000 million euros in 2027 compared to just over 310,000 million euros that it registered in 2019, according to Allied Market Research.

"In general, and beyond Amazon, consumers are buying more and more beauty products online," Bezos's company said in a statement. "And beauty is ripe for innovation, not only in terms of how products are discovered and presented on the web, but also in terms of selection and convenience."

Amazon's success in the segment lies in following its business maxim

According to Yoni Mazor, director of growth and co-founder of technology company Getida, beauty and personal care will continue to be a particularly important sector. lucrative for Amazon, especially given the need for restocking.

"Beauty products are well known for being great for regular customers," Mazor told Business Insider. "Amazon has also built automation where shoppers can sign up and save money on the price they pay for products they buy repeatedly, so Amazon can generate automatic revenue once their shoppers are hooked."

Part of Amazon's success in this area of ​​consumption lies in its skilful strategy of focusing on a broader audience, which is looking for other types of products, and expanding its catalog under this premise. Thus, in 2018 she launched her first independent beauty store with more than 500 emerging brands, not as powerful as high-end cosmetics, and in which hidden brands stand out.

This launch coincided with that of specialty stores such as the salon and spa, as well as its professional skin care store, which preceded it in 2017, and which saw success where the premium beauty store launched in 2013 did not succeed "We remain focused on growing our selection, adding new content, features and functionality to make shopping for beauty products even easier and more enjoyable for our customers," Amazon said.

New immersive experiences that encourage the online purchase of cosmetics

During the pandemic, retailers but powerful beauty brands such as Sephora or Ulta Beauty, until now dominant in the market, innovated in their way of presenting the product when the consumer cannot physically access it with virtual technology tools. In the case of Ulta, Glamlab allows shoppers to try on makeup digitally from home.

Amazon has 'copied' this strategy and implemented it using artificial intelligence. Thanks to it, consumers can digitally test different products.

According to Wendell Lansford, co-founder of marketing technology firm Wyng, such technology is helping Amazon win beauty customers, along with the company's ability to meet the rapidly evolving needs of shoppers in areas like beauty personalization.

"There's information overload coming from social media, so advertising has to be incredibly targeted to break through the noise," Lansford told Business Insider. "These factors, combined with the convenience of having products shipped quickly and directly to their door, will ultimately win them over. Companies that can deliver this will become a go-to destination for beauty products."