Making Sense of Makeup Sales

Has the great makeup boom gone bust? Not so long ago, the color cosmetics category was hotter than a corner booth at Frenchette. Throughout 2016, The NPD Group was reporting prestige channel year-over-year double-digit sales gains in the midteens, with certain segments, like brows and lips, growing even faster, at 37 and 21 percent, respectively, during the third quarter alone. Driven by the social media revolution and an influx of influencers, instruction and, of course, Instagram, makeup sales looked unstoppable. But the figures now aren’t as sizzling. In 2017, color was still the largest category in prestige beauty, with sales of $8.1 billion, but year-over-year growth slowed to 6 percent, according to NPD. The picture in the mass market is even bleaker, with IRI reporting relatively flat sales year-to-date for cosmetics overall, a worrying trend when stalwarts like CoverGirl, Revlon, Almay and Physicians Formula have all staged major rebranding efforts. Online sales of color cosmetics seem to paint a similar picture. In 2017, the category grew 8.4 percent, according to Rakuten Intelligence, versus a whopping 38.4 percent increase the year before. Rakuten’s data does not include Amazon, which seems to be the brightest picture at the moment. One Click Retail reports that the e-commerce

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