Cross-Border: Into The Beauty Industry, Fast Fashion Becomes "Slow"?

Zara has done everything for the debut of its new beauty product line: working with legendary makeup artist Pat McGrath, introducing exquisite packaging 20 lip gloss, and a comprehensive social media blitz.

But designing a noticeable new product is the easiest part of the beauty industry.

For many years, the fast fashion giant has been trying to enter the beauty market, but basically failed.

In 2015, H&M launched the make-up series, and in 2017 it was Asos, Forever 21 and Boohoo. Now Zara has entered the field.

Even today, cosmetics are still a small part of their business, sometimes even negligible.

For a retailer who has conquered the fashion industry, adding perfume, cosmetics or skin care products is a very attractive new business, because beauty products have higher profit margins and lower return rates.

However, the fast fashion rules of the game, which produce garments as fast and cheaply as possible, do not apply to the beauty industry, because in the beauty industry, product testing and regulatory approval can not be rushed.

Cosmetics also face uncertain reactions in stores. Customers who rush to rush for 2 T-shirts may refuse to apply super cheap cosmetics to their faces.

Just like H&M or Zara can quickly put clothing from T to the store in a few weeks, many beauty brands have started to use the fast and cheap mode to run the brand, from the eye shadow of $5 for Colourpop to the $4.99 face cream of Be for Beauty.

Even cosmetics retailers, Sephora and Ulta, show that when they feel competitive, they can adapt quickly, sign exclusive agreements with the hottest new brands, and offer large discounts and loyalty projects.

Rebecca Edelman, deputy director of customer strategy at Gartner L2, said: "there is no real need for Zara or H&M to enter the field. They are just trying to fill a gap that does not exist."

In fact, this is the second beauty attempt of Zara.

The last failed attempt was ten years ago.

Zara this starting point is very small, only two products, all belong to the lip type: 12 kinds of color "Ultimatte" lipstick and 8 kinds of liquid matte gloss.

They are priced at US $12.90 and US $9.90, about two times that of Colourpop products, but far below the high-end products sold in sea or Ulta.

And its competitors have taken similar exploratory measures in hairdressing. Before launching the Asos Face + Body, Asos has already tested the water with the third party brands.

Most fast fashion brands have certain ambitions for their beauty product lines, and consider them to be additional products for larger customer orders in clothing and accessories.

If done well, they can still be a sizeable business: Zara's perfume line, including dozens of fragrances, according to industry estimates, there are about $300 million a year in business, accounting for about 2% of retailers' sales.

However, H&M's perfume business is said to only generate 1000 to $20 million for retailers.

For this claim, H&M did not respond to requests for comment.

Zara and Asos declined to comment.

Maesa CEO Julien Saada said: "they will never focus their strategy or focus on specific areas such as accessories or shoes."

The company produces beauty and perfume products for its own brands for Zara, H&M and other brands.

"You can make money with it, and customers are satisfied with it, because it is cheap but good quality, and it helps retailers survive in other categories," Saada added.

Retailers can achieve this level of success through relatively few investments.

For example, they save money in marketing because products are sold through their own stores, and inventory management is cheaper because lipsticks and perfume are smaller than clothing and are in the same box instead of a variety of sizes.

However, "fast" has different meanings in the cosmetic industry.

The fastest beauty brand may take three months or even longer to develop new products, while some garments will take weeks or even less.

MarkCurry, co-founder of Be for Beauty, said performance, safety and compliance testing take 12 weeks.

Be for Beauty produces Asos own brand beauty products and produces skin care brand The InkeyList, and sells products on Asos Beauty and online retailer Cult Beauty in the UK.

"These big coffee guys are really good at fashion, but the beauty industry is different," he said.

Thinking and acting in different ways.

In fact, beauty is not the main business of fashion retailers, which hinders their development.

The fast fashion beauty series can make people feel free from brand features and be covered by more large-scale clothing products that take up most of the market.

Edelman means that consumers are more likely to forget the cosmetics of these clothing brands after the initial blitz campaign.

Data from Gartner L2 show that between January 2018 and November, the proportion of Zara's overall network traffic attributable to fragrances was only 0.034%.

On the website of H&M and Topshop, the flow of beauty page accounts for only 0.021% and 0.020% of the website traffic.

Forever 21 is more successful in cosmetics than most of its competitors.

It created an independent brand, Riley Rose, which opened independent stores, sold its own brand products, and sold hundreds of third party brands like NYX.

The company operates 17 Riley Rose stores and plans to increase 12 homes this year.

Forever 21, Linda Chang, vice president of merchandise sales, said the company is approaching the beauty and retail industry in a "fast fashion" way, with a wide variety of products and new products.

A person who understands this business says that the company's goal is to increase the proportion of beauty products to total sales from about 1% to 10% by 2024.

"While other fast fashion companies insist on their brand narratives and get involved in the beauty products of their own brands and brands, we are the only companies that have created a completely immersive beauty experience," explains Chang.

Zara hopes to gain advantage through cooperation with McGrath.

Although the makeup artist did not design any product for the retailer, she participated in the print ads from Steven Meisel and launched a set of $25.9 toolkit, including dummy lipstick, liquid dummy lipstick and lip liner used in the 2018 Zara Woman series.

Pamela Baxter, co-founder and chief executive officer of Bona Fide Beauty Lab, said that fashion retailers had better cooperate with influential people to develop a series of capsule series instead of trying to establish permanent production lines.

"A good cosmetic brand is led by influential people. You need a certain degree of authority or support from the masses," she said.

This theory may soon be tested.

Fashion Nova, an online fast fashion seller known for its influence on Instagram, is planning to launch Nova Beauty later this year.