What to Watch: Prestige Beauty Considers Amazon

Is 2018 the year more prestige beauty brands will bow to Amazon pressure? Perhaps. “We’ve had a lot of conversations with high-end brands, especially luxury beauty brands, that are saying, ‘We need to have an Amazon strategy, how do we do that?’” said Elaine Kwon, a former Amazon employee and cofounder of Kwontified, which works with fashion and beauty brands on their Amazon launches before they happen and on their Amazon strategies as they sell through the marketplace. “More and more brands, especially within the higher-end divisions of not only beauty but also fashion overall, are approaching Amazon in a number of ways,” Kwon said. “The bottom line is ‘we have to do something about it.’ What that entails manifests differently depending on the brand.” Stifel analyst Mark Astrachan agreed it’s likely more prestige lines will trickle onto Amazon throughout 2018 — especially because even if brands don’t sell on the site directly, their products have a strong chance of winding up there anyway via unauthorized third-party sellers. “I’d be willing to bet you’d see more, not less, bigger prestige-type assets sold on Amazon,” Astrachan said. “Whether it will be a lot of them or a jailbreak is unlikely, but I do think selectively the bigger

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