Walgreens Teams With Birchbox For Beauty Products

To attract millennials and increase its focus on beauty products, Walgreens is partnering with subscription service Birchbox. Walgreens will also take a minority stake in the makeup company, CNBC reported.

“Beauty is a very important category for Walgreens, and we’ve been doing a huge amount of work to get ourselves ready for a partnership like this to take us to the next step,” Walgreens Group Vice President of Beauty and Personal Care Lauren Brindley told CNBC.

With the tie-up, the retailer plans to allocate between 400 and 1,000 square feet in brick-and-mortar stores to the concept and enable its shoppers to “build your own Birchbox.” In terms of the rollout, the the pilot will begin at 11 of the retailer’s stores in Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Minneapolis, Miami and New York City. At the same time, the retailer plans to dedicate a section of its eCommerce website to Birchbox and add additional “prestigious” brands of makeup to its stores.

The news comes as Kroger and Walgreens are teaming up for an experimental program to help customers retrieve their online grocery orders. Shoppers will be able pick up their supermarket orders at 13 of the pharmacy’s brick-and-mortar locations in the pilot, CNBC reported.

With the experiment, Walgreens also plans to offer a selection of private-label Kroger products to its customers. In an announcement earlier this month, Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen said, “This concept brings together the best of two great brands to rethink convenience and redefine the way America shops for food.” Following the news, Kroger shares rose by roughly 1 percent during premarket trading.

Walgreens Boots Alliance Executive Vice Chairman and CEO Stefano Pessina said in the announcement,“This innovative new concept is an opportunity to test and learn, as we determine how we can best work together to further elevate our customer offering.” Pessina added that the retailer continues to bring in new ways of thinking about production selection and promotions “to deliver greater value in our stores.”