Dive Brief:

• Birchbox Thursday is launching an in-house brand of makeup called LOC, for “love of color.”

• The brand includes lipstick and eyeshadows to be released in seasonal colors, priced at $8 to $10 and sized to last just a season.

• The launch, a collaboration with GlamLifeGuru YouTube beauty blogger Tati Westbrook, is part of a new campaign to develop in-house brands and products featured alongside the name-brand products it already sells.

Dive Insight:

This is a significant strategy for Birchbox, which has been trying to move beyond its subscription box of samples to boost more sales of regular size versions of products. Birchbox has admitted that its subscription service has actually driven sales to its beauty retail competitors like Sephora, which has recently introduced its own beauty box subscription service, dubbed Play! by Sephora. Launching its own line of beauty products can potentially help Birchbox capture some of its lost sales, especially as the company expands its brick-and-mortar presence throughout the U.S. 

The campaign leverages Birchbox’s sales approach using research and data from stores and e-commerce sales to determine what its customers want, which will also inform new products for its in-house offerings.

The brand name choice is a curious one, eschewing the Birchbox name for an entirely new one. That, too, was decided after assessing what its customers’ best response would be, according to co-founder and CEO Katia Beauchamp.

"There is a lot of substance that goes into building a brand," Beauchamp told Fast Company. "We went through an entire exercise of asking what this new brand stands for, what it's value proposition is, and what its reason to exist is."