Glossy held its Future of Fashion and Luxury Summit LIVE earlier this week, bringing marketers from leading DTC, mass, and luxury fashion brands together to discuss how they’re responding to shifts in consumer expectations in a rapidly changing landscape, and their plans for tackling retail’s biggest challenges ahead. Klarna’s Head of Beauty and Accessories, Jenna Potter, joined speakers from Fabletics, Mejuri, and more. Drawing on consumer shopping data from Klarna’s app, which allows people to shop from any retailer online, Jenna talked through the beauty industry’s opportunity for an e-commerce makeover.
Beauty stood out as one of the fastest growing online categories throughout the pandemic, and one of the most innovative in the customer shopping journey. We saw beauty sales soar across demographics when we compared an average week pre-COVID with week on week data throughout the crisis. With an overall 37% increase in the number of beauty shoppers on the app, millennials, Gen Z, and Gen X all had a more than 20% increases in spend in the beauty category, with millennials leading the way with a 32% increase.
This is not surprising, given beauty has consistently been one of the most searched topics on Google, a leading category for Instagram and YouTube tutorials, and is a driving force for online community building. As Jenna shared with summit viewers, in the months ahead retailers will need to continue to build their e-commerce presence and merge their digital and physical channels to create seamless customer experiences.