NEW YORK — Natural beauty products are stealthily creeping into the mainstream market.
By far, retailers such as The Body Shop, Aveda, Whole Foods, Wild Oats and independent health food and vitamin stores still account for the bulk of sales, estimated at a remarkable $3.9 billion in 2003, up 10.9 percent from the year before, according to Packaged Facts, a division of MarketResearch.com. However, traditional mass market retailers — supermarkets, drugstores and discounters — now account for a healthy 20 percent of revenues.
And with the U.S. natural beauty products market predicted to climb to $5.8 billion by 2008, traditional mass retailers are expected to represent a larger share of the pie as more brands with a natural orientation make their way onto those shelves. In 2003, skin care was the largest segment at $2.6 billion, followed by hair care at $936 million and cosmetics with sales of $314 million.
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Don Montouri, research editor at Packaged Facts, noted that one of the reasons the firm undertook a study on natural beauty products is that it had received several inquiries from leading consumer products companies such as Procter & Gamble and L’Oréal on the topic.
For now, the market remains dominated by smaller companies, with brands like Kiss My Face, Burt’s Bees and Jason being some of the first to elbow their way onto drugstore, discounter and supermarket shelves. CVS, for one, has recently created a Natural Beauty Care section in some of its more developed beauty departments. The drugstore chain, along with Target, is also testing a section of Boots U.K. brands that includes Botanics, a cosmetics and skin care collection based on plant extracts. Loblaws, the Canadian supermarket, is trying the Aubrey Organics brand, which currently is a marketshare leader in natural and health food stores.
And these efforts could be just the beginning. Packaged Facts predicts natural grooming sections are “poised to spread like wildfire” in America’s supermarkets, chain drugstores and mass merchandisers.
Early adopters have been the specialty food chain Trader Joe’s of Los Angeles, which even possesses private label natural beauty brands, and Rochester, N.Y.-based Wegmans, which merchandises natural beauty products within its Nature’s Marketplace section.
Whole Foods Markets, a 155-store natural foods supermarket chain with headquarters in Austin, Tex., holds ongoing events to promote beauty in its stores. Peter Lamas, a celebrity hairstylist who launched Lamas Beauty International in 2001, a product line that includes hair and skin care, recently gave presentations at several Whole Foods Stores in Texas. The Ecco Bella cosmetics brand held a makeover session from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on a recent Saturday at the Montclair, N.J., store, while the founder of Savage Beauty, Jane Schub, has been offering product demonstrations at the new Columbus Circle store in the Time Warner Center here.
Allyn Jones, North Atlantic regional director for the Whole Body Department at Whole Foods, noted that customer service and education is a priority. There is typically a body care specialist and vitamin specialist available in all of its stores. Sales of its beauty products have climbed double digits for two years and Jones anticipates that trend to continue. “We absolutely expect to see an increase in retail sales [of beauty products] again this year” — at least in the 10 percent range, she said.
“We have been working to really try to increase the visual look of our department and get the message out to our customers about what makes our products different from the mass market,” said Jones. “We want to touch base with the customers who are already there because they want to eat well. Why not put good products on the body?”
Jones sees Whole Foods in competition with mass stores for body care sales and at a disadvantage, because they “have lots of money in advertising.”
Of course, there is a quandry over what constitutes a “natural” or “organic” beauty product. Without regulated standards, marketers tend to apply the “natural” designation if an item contains natural ingredients. Organic typically refers to products that use ingredients grown without pesticides, artificial preservatives and colors, and are fragrance-free. Only in California are there regulations for the labeling of organic beauty products.
Aubrey Hampton, president of Aubrey Organics, has taken to applying FDA guidelines enacted last year for organic food products to label his company’s beauty items.
Regardless of the loose oversight, there has been a groundswell of interest in linking health, wellness and beauty in the marketplace.
Already drugstore chains have been mapping a return to their roots as purveyors of healthful products to more broadly include beauty. At last week’s National Association of Chain Drug Stores annual meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., Rite Aid chief executive Mary Sammons remarked, “People are starting to connect looking good and feeling good.” The drugstore industry, she added, “must place a larger focus on helping people take care of their health.”
Bernadette Haley, publisher of Organic Style magazine, noted that the magazine has started “wellness” tours that link beauty and wellness concepts in malls. Corporate sponsors have included Aveda and Clairol’s Natural Instincts. With interest rising in organic products and lifestyles, Haley noted that the magazine has increased its frequency this year from six issues to 10.