Inside-out beauty is definitely in at Walgreens.
The pharmacy chain is delving into the emerging trend with nutraceutical pioneer Borba by launching 10 new topical products, priced from $9.99 to $24.99, exclusive to Walgreens, and eight new ingestible products, priced from $14.99 to $19.99, in roughly 2,500 of its top beauty doors in January. Dedicated Borba in-store boutiques will occupy around 12 linear feet of prime beauty placement in the majority of the Walgreens stores with Borba, although smaller stores will have displays of 7.5 linear feet, according to Borba.
Shannon Petree, divisional vice president and general merchandise manager of beauty and personal care at Walgreens, said Borba forges a bridge between health and wellness and beauty.
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“More and more people, as they understand health and they do homeopathic care, they are becoming more savvy about how the inside of the body translates to the outside of the body,” she said. Like the growing category of vitamins, she continued, products to amplify exterior beauty from the interior are another way for the shopper “to take care of herself, to look good and feel good all at the same time.”
Borba founder Scott-Vincent Borba believes a bestseller at Walgreens will be the Age Defying 4-in-1 Cleansing Treatment designed to remove makeup, exfoliate, refine pores and have antiaging benefits. Aside from the new topical and ingestible products, the Borba in-store boutiques will feature the brand’s mainstays, Skin Balance Water and Crystalline Drink Mix products. They will also spotlight Borba’s book “Skintervention: The Personalized Solution for Healthier, Younger, and Flawless-Looking Skin,” published by HCI Books, and a variety of kits for women in their 50s and 60s. The Borba products are now being previewed on walgreens.com.
Luring people to purchase ingestible beauty products has been tricky at many U.S. retailers. “Nutricosmetics are still a very niche concept,” said Mark Whalley, an analyst at research firm Datamonitor. “While manufacturers should be thinking of how they can creatively incorporate functional ingredients into new product types, it is more important that they create effective products that work, because there is still a relatively high degree of skepticism around.”
Petree said Walgreens will give customers “time to adapt” to the inside-out beauty trend “because it is on the left-hand side of the bell curve.…It is a new way of doing business inside of our walls, and, hopefully, because we have the asset of our beauty advisers, that is going to help us sell.”
Borba, which is sold at around 300 doors, including Ulta, Dillard’s and CVS’ Beauty 360, could generate at least $10 million in first-year sales at Walgreens, according to sources.