The Sleek MakeUP brand is now, this month, available on Walgreens.com and in some 150 Walgreens doors. Ecommerce is an important piece of the pie for all beauty brands, and increasingly that's true for retailers as well. Nearly one year ago Walgreens shut down its beauty.com and drugstore.com sites, as Cosmetics Design reported.
And now the company has an omnichannel approach to (cosmetics and personal care) retail. When the company took beauty.com offline, industry observer Laureen Schroeder who owns and is the principal consultant at Bespoke Beauty Partners noted that “if Walgreen's is effective, this could change the game for other drug store and mass market retailers who have been looking for solutions to win the online consumer - but have not made significant advances to date.”
The store
Undeniably, the drugstore chain is very strategically leveraging beauty, even while financial analysts express doubts: “From our perspective, U.S. consumers may not view a retail pharmacy as a top destination for cosmetics where high-end specialty and department stores dominate the space,” morningstar.com senior equity analyst Vishnu Lekraj wrote early this year.
This latest cosmetics launch only serves to magnify Walgreen’s commitment to succeed in at mass beauty. “It’s an exciting time for beauty at Walgreens,” Lauren Brindley, group vice president and general merchandise manager, at Walgreens, says in this week’s company press release about the Sleek MakeUP lanuch.
“Customers want to shop the most sought-after brands,” she says. And, “the addition of Sleek MakeUP to our cosmetic offering is just another example of how we continue to deliver on our promise to differentiate and elevate the beauty experience at Walgreens.”
“We will continue to deliver new and exciting brands in a welcoming and accessible environment in hopes of giving our beauty customers more reasons to shop our store,” promises Brindley.
The brand
Sleek MakeUP launched in 1995 and was acquired by The Walgreens Boots Alliance twenty years later.
According to the release, the brand “has a unique, authentic heritage that originated in East London….Inclusivity has always been at the heart of every decision Sleek makes, creating products that celebrate all women and men without exception, readdressing the balance of beauty norms.”
A quick look online at the Walgreens site shows that the brand's product selection includes complexion kits, eyeshadow pallets, cheek color, lip color, and much more.