The report considers data from five core Western markets: the US, the UK, Germany, Canada and France. It breaks down Amazon’s consumables offering into four core product groups: Health & Personal Care, Grocery, Beauty and Pets.
Across all five countries, Health & Personal Care was the largest of the four product groups, accounting for more than a third of Amazon’s total consumables sales.
“Already experiencing steady double-digit growth, in the third quarter of 2017 Amazon’s sales of consumables ramped up significantly. As the grocery and health & personal care markets stagnate in the brick and mortar space, eCommerce sales pick up the slack,” the report observes.
“Amazon’s sales of consumables, including HPC, Grocery, Beauty and Pets, grew by an average of 80% across the US, UK, Germany, France and Canada, with the Beauty and Pets groups both doubling in size.”
Beauty highlights
The report, by One Click Retail, picks out the following highlights when it comes to the beauty industry:
- Skin Care is the leading category in 4 out of the 5 countries surveyed
- Prestige products were the fastest growers in both the U.K. and Germany and two of the major growth categories in the U.S. were Luxury Cosmetics (69% growth) and Luxury Skin Care (37% growth).
- In Canada, Luxury Skin Care earned $300,000 in Q3, a far cry from the $25M earned by the category in the U.S. but more than double the sales over the same period in 2016.
“Online sales of beauty products have always been a challenge. Traditionally, because the cosmetics industry relies so heavily on experiential retail, high-end brands would focus on specialized brick-and-mortar outlets and Amazon would only be a destination for inexpensive, mass market cosmetics,” the report’s authors explain.
“This remains a factor – in 4 out of 5 of our countries Skin Care is the leading category – but the tide finally seems to be turning.”