Dive Brief:
- Revolution Beauty is the latest beauty brand to form a wholesale partnership with Walmart as the mass retailer continues to expand its footprint in the category.
- For U.K.-based Revolution Beauty, the agreement with Walmart expands the brand’s presence in the U.S. and marks the fourth major retailer to carry its products in the last three years, according to a company press release. Revolution Beauty partnered with Walgreens last May.
- Revolution Beauty’s offering with Walmart will feature the brand’s new Relove by Revolution collection, exclusive to the mass merchant, in 2,500 of the retailer’s locations as well as on its website. All Relove by Revolution products are priced at $5 and under and include an assortment of products like foundation, brushes, freckle pens and water-activated liners.
Dive Insight:
Revolution Beauty’s move into Walmart follows several DTC brands that have launched wholesale partnerships in big-box stores to broaden their customer base and offer consumers a brick-and-mortar alternative to purchase products.
Both Walmart and Target have been investing in broadening their beauty assortments, with Target recently expanding its mix with “thousands” of new products. Walmart has a beauty accelerator program for up-and-coming brands and recently launched a clean beauty platform that highlights products made without over 1,200 ingredients including acetone, phthalates and parabens.
As a category, beauty continues to be strong according to data provided by Circana. “Beauty had a phenomenal year in 2022 and continues to do well in 2023,” said Larissa Jensen, vice president and beauty industry adviser at Circana.
While prestige beauty has outperformed the mass market in terms of unit sales, Jensen acknowledged that dollar volume in mass is up 10% the first three months of 2023 following a 4% gain last year. Jensen further attributes some of those gains to the “lipstick index” of consumers treating themselves to small indulgences of all beauty products during tough economic times. “Consumers are really indulging within these categories,” she added.
Walmart has been increasing its beauty footprint with DTC brands, yet the retailer has been offloading other e-commerce brands that it had invested in over the past few years as it seeks to tighten operations amid a perceived economic slowdown. Among the brands that Walmart disposed of were men’s clothing brand Bonobos, women’s apparel brand ModCloth, outdoor retailer Moosejaw and the Jet.com e-commerce site.
Additionally, Walmart has laid off several thousand employees at distribution centers that support its e-commerce operations. Walmart recently told investors it would be relying more on robots in stores and at its fulfillment centers.
