Dive Brief:

• Glamsquad, known for its range of hair, makeup and nail services, will be launching its own makeup line in April, CEO Amy Shecter told Retail Dive in an interview. The move comes after the company launched its own haircare line in December.

• The collection will be small to start, focused on the essentials, with an emphasis on products that are priming and protecting, Shecter said. She did note, though, that the company will be releasing more products over the course of the year, including in the haircare line.

• Glamsquad had a big year in 2018 in other respects as well. In addition to launching its own products, the company partnered with CVS at several locations for a pilot featuring express in-store services.

Dive Insight:

Glamsquad is capitalizing on its position as a beauty service provider to create and sell its own products, a strategy which started in December with haircare and will be expanding into makeup in April. In the beauty sector, services and product have become increasingly entwined, with many traditional players focusing on experiential in-store services to stay competitive, or partnering with players like Glamsquad to spice up the in-store atmosphere.

For Shecter, the decision to launch product was an easy one — 65% of the company's services are focused on hair, so the amount of feedback Glamsquad received through both its clients and its beauty pros made it easy to develop its own products in the category.

"We've had 600,000 customers give us feedback around what they like and what they don't like," Shecter told Retail Dive. "And every single time we had conversations and focus groups with our beauty pros, they said: 'The customer is in the chair, we're using x, y and z product, and they go into their app or on their computer and they have us buy it with them.'"

That sparked the product development process for Glamsquad — an 18-month long feedback loop that led to its current proprietary haircare line. According to Shecter, the same approach is being applied to the company's upcoming makeup line, with customer feedback front-and-center in the process.

"We are never going to be a full-on makeup brand and we're never going to be a full-on hair brand, but we know through very, very targeted conversations with our beauty pros and our clients what products they love the most," Shecter said, calling the products "highly curated and personalized" for Glamsquad's customers.

Some of those learnings have centered around wellness, a concept that has followed Shecter through her past experience at Corepower Yoga and other businesses. The line is focused on taking the stress out of applying makeup, whether that means using a certain scent, oil or other product. But it also points to a larger trend of brands and retailers taking advantage of readily available customer data to create their own private label products and lines.

Target has seen success with its popular private label products and Amazon is known for entering the private label game based on data about the bestsellers on its platform.

"You can't help it," Shecter said of the company's decision to get into the product game. "The experience is so holistic and you get such great tips about the product, it made so much sense for us to take our services business into selling the products that we use as opposed to doing it for everybody else."