Walmart breaks into online beauty retailing

The company says it will make a wide selection of personal care products, including both health and beauty items, available on the company’s online portal.

This means beauty and personal care products can be ordered, paid for and delivered, alongside any type of grocery shopping which has until now including food, clothing and a large selection of hardware items.

Featuring leading brands​

The retailer charges a shipping fee of 97 cents per personal care or health care item delivered to an individual’s home.

Walmart, which is the largest retailer in both the United States and the world, says that its online health and beauty category will include leading global brands including L’Oreal, Colgate, Neutrogena, Pantene and Gillette.

Beauty products will be sold online under seven different categories, which will include: fragrance, make-up, massage and spa, men’s care, skin care, hair care and personal care, while baby care and oral care products are sold under individual sub categories.

Move reflects growing potential of channel​

The fact that a retailer of Walmart’s size has moved into retailing personal care products online reflects the size of the market, but more importantly, it’s growing potential.

Walmart’s online portal is currently the second most popular retail site in the US, overshadowed only by Amazon, and is estimated to generate sales in excess of $2bn.

More specifically growth in online sales for the health and personal care categories is expected to outpace that for many other consumer goods, with Forrester Research estimating that online sales of personal care and OTC medical products are set to grow by an estimated 91 percent between 2008 and 2012.

Walmart has had a relatively slow start​

Although most personal care companies and retailers have long had dedicated online retail portals, Walmart has been relatively slow off the mark when it comes to selling beauty products, because it has until now been able to retail its products significantly cheaper in-store.

However, with the help of a logistical partner and by tapping into a number of synergies, the company says that it is now able to launch its online beauty retail channel with competitively priced products.

Beauty products are expected to retail online at comparable prices to those in-store, which should mean that Walmart will be able to trump many of its competitor online beauty retailers.