Last year, the beauty industry took in a whopping $532 billion in revenue for global sales with $93.5 billion coming from US sales. The beauty industry has seen an increase from year to year as new brands, products, and trends have emerged in the industry causing significant growth in the last few years.
Washington, DC makeup artist Judi Scharfman says, “It’s been very exciting watching and being a part of the growth in the cosmetics community over the last few years...to see how much this virus has hurt the economy this year is devastating.”
Throughout the US, most all traditional and ecommerce businesses were forced to close due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Online sales for both traditional and ecommerce-based companies were temporarily closed due to fulfillment centers being shut down but resumed work a few weeks later.
Around the time the brick and mortar stores began to reopen, retail locations in major metropolitan areas were subjected to looting and riots in response to the protests George Floyd. The looting of these businesses resulted in product losses and building damage.
Beauty and cosmetics retailers Ulta and Sephora suffered major losses in revenue due to the pandemic closure as they rely on in-store purchases at their brick and mortar locations. Ulta reported a $78.5 million loss for Q1 compared to the $192.2 million profit from 2019.
Logo provided by J. Scharfman, Photo by R. Carmack
Washington DC makeup artist & Beauty by Judi owner Judi Scharfman
As her second income, Scharfman owns and operates Beauty by Judi which provides makeup services for special occasions like weddings, birthday parties, and beauty pageants. “It’s not just major companies in the Beauty Industry that have lost money due to COVID-19. I have lost around $3500 a month due to all the weddings and events that have been cancelled or postponed since March,” says Scharfman.
Popular online cosmetics brands like Morphe, Kylie Cosmetics, Jeffree Star Cosmetics, & Fenty Beauty will see less revenue losses. These companies started as strictly online sales before making deals with retailers like Ulta and Sephora to carry their products in-stores.
Photo by R. Carmack
Some of Maria Nicole's favorite makeup products from brands like Kylie Cosmetics, Morphe, Ulta, and Fenty Beauty.
Many of the popular online brands stayed busy and launched multiple new collections in May and June. While the collections were success and some even sold out, not all customers were thrilled and felt that the companies should have adjusted their release schedules.
Maria Nicole Hertez is a fan of Morphe but aired her grievances with all the collection launches. She said, “It’s so frustrating that in the last few months they have released a new collection almost every two weeks!”. In the last few weeks, Morphe released a LGBT+ Pride collection, Coca Cola collection, and a collection with reality show dancer Maddie Ziegler of Dance Moms fame this past Friday, June 26th.
While Morphe has set affordable price points for all their products, they usually have 4-5 new items in each collection. Maria went on to say, “don’t all these companies understand that most everyone lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 lockdown? We can’t afford to spend $100 every two weeks when they drop a new collection”.
It is unclear how much the beauty and cosmetics industry will actually see in revenue losses this year. Currently, many expect to see anywhere between a 20% - 30% decrease in revenue compared to 2019. But if a second wave of the Coronavirus does hit the US, losses are most likely to be around 35%.
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