Walmart and Target are both gunning to become beauty destinations, as both retailers touted the category during recent earnings calls.
At Target, the beauty category saw a nearly 10% bump in net sales compared to the same period last year, reaching $3.4 billion. Several Target C-suite executives sounded upbeat on the new beauty shop-in-shops coming to 600 stores later this year, and Chief Operating Officer Lisa Roath teased experimentation with staffing.
“In beauty, we're testing new staffing and operating models to free up more time to focus on guests, especially during peak periods,” Roath said on the call. The move comes as Target’s Ulta shop-in-shop experience is set to conclude this August.
Walmart is also reworking store staffing to improve its beauty department. The retailer in April announced it will expand a new specialized beauty store associate role to 425 stores across the U.S. this year, after a successful pilot test.
Walmart CFO John David Rainey on the retailer’s call acknowledged that tax refunds during Q1 were higher than expected, leading to some macro benefit for the company. However, he did not want to credit those refunds with driving all the general merchandise sales success this period.
“If you take beauty as a category, 75% of the growth in beauty came from new brands like La Roche Posay and others, and so we're expanding our assortment,” Rainey told analysts. Walmart is “providing an assortment that appeals to customers of all income levels."
Walmart launched La Roche-Posay in select stores earlier this year as part of its broader beauty strategy. The mass retailer’s CEO John Furner described the beauty category as a “standout” in the latest quarter.
Target is positioning itself as a beauty destination, Chief Merchandising Officer Cara Sylvester and CEO Michael Fiddelke both reiterated on the call. The company will focus on having an assortment of loved brands within the new “Target Beauty Studio” spaces in stores, Fiddelke noted.
“We know in a category like beauty, making sure that our service levels are equal to the rare air that some of our brands are, is incredibly important,” he said.
