Amazon To Offer Beauty Sales Event in October

Amazon is planning to roll out a beauty products event in October to bolster its standing in that category, along with trying to get early holiday shoppers, CNBC writes.

Amazon sent a slide deck to beauty brands saying that the company will likely hold the event between Oct. 4 through the 25^th this year. The document was confirmed to be authentic by Catie Kroon, spokesperson for the eCommerce giant.

“We want to draw customers back to Amazon during Black Friday week but also long term with additional marketing levers,” Amazon wrote in the slide deck. “This is a unique opportunity for selected brands to reach both more shoppers and new customers.”

The beauty market has been of interest to Amazon as it tries to diversify. Customers have been using the web more often in the past year and a half to buy beauty products, with online makeup sales surging 40 percent in 2020 from a year prior and other items like shampoo, face wash products and lotions also burgeoning in sales.

Amazon has been working on expanding its beauty category. Now that category features a “premium beauty” subcategory, which has more high-end items. There’s also an indie beauty store featuring new and emerging brands, along with specialized hair care sections and the company’s own skin care section, CNBC writes.

Americans were mostly stuck inside for the 2020 holiday season as the vaccine was not available yet, and they spent a record amount of money from devices like smartphones and laptops. Online purchases in November and December were up 32.2 percent compared to a year earlier, hitting $188.2 billion, the report says.

In other Amazon news, the company is taking its palm-scanning technology, Amazon One, to entertainment venues instead of just in retail aisles. This is being done with ticketing solutions firm AXS and will constitute free-standing contactless ticketing stations.

Read more: Amazon One Palm Scanning Tech Moves Into Entertainment With AXS Collab