How Target’s Beauty Strategy Is Beating Mass Market Trends

Beauty’s mass market might be in a state of flux, but Target Corp. is only heading upward.

Per the company’s last earnings call, beauty helped drive a 2.7 percent growth in the second quarter, alongside fashion, with net sales totaling $25.5 billion and beating Wall Street expectations. Within that, beauty rose 9 percent on a comparable basis, on top of double-digit growth a year ago. 

The secret sauce is the right brand mix, a bevvy of price points, an integrated digital strategy and a willingness to jump on trends early, said Rick Gomez, Target’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer, in a wide-ranging interview with WWD.

“Beauty at Target has been a booming business for us. We have had growth every year for the last five years, and that has made our beauty business actually double in size since 2019,” Gomez said.

That success stands in sharp contrast to the broader mass market. In the first half in the U.S. mass hair and skin care grew only 2 and 1 percent respectively, while fragrance dipped 1 percent and makeup fell 4 percent, per Circana.

Among a slew of other factors, Gomez attributed Target’s growth to the right assortment — at the right time.

“Beauty is all about newness and innovation. Consumers want to try new products and new brands, and we’ve made a big commitment to launching newness this year,” he said, adding that thousands of stock keeping units would launch in 2025.

Among the successful launches is Blake Brown, the hair care brand incubated by Give Back Beauty in tandem with founder Blake Lively, which on launch day alone had the five bestselling hair care items at Target. “That has been the largest hair care launch in the history of Target,” Gomez said. “It goes to show when you get the right product, on-trend, at an affordable price, it does really well for us.”

Gomez also pointed to L’Oréal’s Colorsonic, a Target exclusive, in addition to Tabitha Brown’s Donna’s Recipe and Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie. The latter is available through Target’s partnership with Ulta Beauty, which currently entails shops-in-shop in roughly 800 doors and has given Target’s assortment a wide breadth of price points.

“50 percent of our [beauty] assortment is under $10, but value is important in the sense that consumers are looking for high quality products — they’re also shopping prestige,” Gomez said. “It’s about providing the range of value across price points and also offering quality product at an affordable price.”

Just as wide as the price points range, so do Target’s beauty shopper. “We have a broad consumer base that ranges in age and geography, and we have a broad assortment from Gen Alpha all the way to the 55-plus consumer — we make sure we have something for everybody,” he said. “Gen Alpha might love a fun brand like E.l.f. Cosmetics, and the 55-plus consumer might like a brand like Roc Skincare.”

Although many of the successful brands include famous founders, Gomez said they’re only a part of Target’s brand formula. “We’re not a catalog and we’re very thoughtful about which brands we carry,” he said. “We look to prestige brands, emerging brands, digitally native brands and, of course our own brand. That’s the magic mix.”

In some cases, that includes thinking small and homing in on microtrends to lead the market toward broader areas of growth. “Trends come from social. On TikTok, the Unbrush was trending. We jumped on it, and within eight weeks, had a display of the Unbrush in-store. We’ve since sold 27 colors; it’s been a huge hit and a big driver of growth.”

One company underscored Target’s willingness to spot trends in their nascent stages — and capitalize on them early.

“What differentiates Target is that they have a pulse on the culture and a pulse on the mega-trends too,” said Osh Savur, chief marketing and brand officer at Maesa, which owns brands Fine’ry, Being Frenshe and Kristin Ess Hair that are sold at Target. “Working with them as an incubator, they are also seeing what we see and are able to validate those trends.”

Savur pointed to Fine’ry, Maesa’s fragrance brand that debuted as a Target exclusive in 2023, as an example. “They had instinct, they carved out space in the planogram, and got behind it in a way that it was able to scale,” she said.

At the time of Fine’ry’s launch, industry sources estimated it would exceed $20 million in sales.

“We knew fragrance was a breakthrough category during COVID[-19], but mass had started walking away from it. Target was able to place back what they were seeing happen in the market, work with us and launch a brand right at the cusp of where growth was happening,” added Savur.

Homing in on trends early and spotting the next big thing is nothing new for Target. It was E.l.f. Beauty’s first retail partner back in 2005. Almost 20 years later, that partnership is still flourishing.

“We’re their number-one brand with over 20 percent of their entire category,” said Tarang Amin, chief executive officer of E.l.f. Beauty, in a recent interview.

As for Target’s digital strategy, it isn’t just localized to social media trends as Gomez is gearing up to test new technologies to improve user experience.

“It’s 20 percent of the business,” Gomez said of Target’s digital beauty sales. “We’re leaning into new technology that enables things like virtual try-on for lips, eyes and foundation. It’s become a source for learning about products, and then shoppers can go in-store and purchase. It’s truly omnichannel. We don’t think about it as brick-and-mortar shopping and then digital shopping — we see it all as shopping. Oftentimes in-store, you’ll see someone with their phone open in their hand.”

Another key area of growth is its minis business, which has more than doubled in the last three years. The opportunity there, Gomez said, is manifold.

“There’s a travel business, and there’s also a lot of experimentation and trying new things,” Gomez said. “We do see that people will use minis as a trial and then they come back to buy the full size. It’s a space we’ll continue to lean into.

“We think minis will be great this holiday season for stocking stuffers. They’re also great for everyday things like hand sanitizer and lip balm,” he continued. “So, minis is definitely a trend that we’re seeing has played through back-to-school and will continue through the holiday season.”