Buying Cosmetics

I honestly don’t think I can remember the last time I was in a department store for the purpose of buying cosmetics, but I do know it has been a while. I mean, think about it, right? You’ve got all these other places now devoted to nothing but makeup, and they’ve got a just as good if not better selection, plus they’re usually a little easier to get into and out of anyway, so the choice is pretty obvious.

It caught my eye when I was just browsing around a few financial sites the other day that my favorite department store Macy’s - I call it my favorite because it’s the one I remember most from my childhood, due in no small part to the many Thanksgivings and Christmases we had here in the Northeast so closely associated with that store, and I believe as an adult I’ve been in there as many times as I’ve been in any of the major ones - has purchased an upscale cosmetics chain called Bluemercury that it’ll be placing inside its box stores in order to augment its sales in the makeup category. (See the 40-second mark or so of the video on this article webpage: fortune.com/2017/10/04/macys-bluemercury/.) They’re also going to start giving customers more self-service options for sampling new products, as opposed to the traditional department store’s tactic of helicopter selling (i.e., hovering and constantly engaged in consultation whether requested or not).

Bluemercury CEO Marla Beck (who co-founded the eminently disruptive company with one store in 1999 with husband and COO Barry Beck) was quoted in a January 2018 article by Pete Born of WWD that she observed a marked increase in her brand’s sales through the past holiday season at Macy’s, saying “The consumer was euphoric; they were out shopping in a huge, huge way.”

With the preponderance of neighborhood boutique stores and personalized beauty consultants it will be interesting to see if the standard large department store can make a comeback as a preferred way to find and buy new kinds of makeup, but I would imagine that the best way to have a small-store feel in a large store is to put the small store inside the large store.

Is Macy’s Upping its Makeup Game?