Chanel’s Beauty Line Is Coming to Ulta

This is a very big deal for both brands.

Yesterday on Ulta’s 2017 fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Mary Dillon had a lot of good news for investors. But one announcement she made will surely stand out to beauty shoppers more than any growth statistic: Ulta is going to start carrying Chanel Beauté, beyond just fragrances.

Finally, we’re thrilled to announce a prestigious addition for 2018 — Chanel Beauté. Following our long-standing partnership with Chanel offering their iconic fragrances in hundreds of our stores, we are honored to introduce Chanel Beauté in a small number of Ulta Beauty doors this year. This will be an edited assortment featuring a Chanel-branded makeup station with the first Chanel store opening in Westport, Connecticut, in just a few weeks.

It’s not clear exactly which products will land in Ulta stores, when they’ll arrive, and whether they’ll be available online at Ulta.com. We’ve reached out to Chanel and will update with any further information.

This is a pretty big deal for both brands. First of all, Chanel has made a very visible, concerted push to court the Instagram generation over the last few weeks. To support this, the brand launched two beauty-specific Instagram accounts. One, @chanel.beauty, features posts created by the brand. A second, @welovecoco, regrams and aggregates posts from fans who tag the account. The rollout was supported by multiple beauty influencers, who were presumably paid by Chanel to promote the launch. Many makeup brands include brand- and user-generated content under one account, so Chanel’s strategy is a bit unusual in the space.

Chanel has also launched a series of social media-friendly pop-up experiences. One, called the Chanel Beauty House, was live for four days in LA at the beginning of March. Every room was branded to the hilt and infinitely shareable on Instagram. (The bathroom, with its Chanel-logoed towels, was everywhere on the site.) Chanel also just opened a pop-up experience in Toronto’s Holt Renfrew department store called the Chanel Coco Game Center. It will be open through April 15th and features classic arcade games, like a claw machine, all Chanel-branded.

Chanel Beauté has previously been available in its own stores and website, in select department stores, and in Cos Bar brick-and-mortar stores. It’s surprising that the brand didn’t launch into Sephora, which has a more luxurious price point than Ulta. Ulta carries a high-low mix of brands, but has recently been increasing its high-end brand assortment. It’s clearly a sign that Chanel is looking to attract younger customers, who historically shop at Ulta. It worked for MAC, which made a similar leap from department stores to Ulta last year. According to WWD, the MAC launch was the retailer’s most successful e-commerce launch ever.

As far as Ulta, it stands to gain a lot of clout from selling a prestigious brand like Chanel, if it chooses products and price points carefully. According to Dillon, higher-end brands didn’t do quite as well as the mass brands Ulta carries, but she was optimistic:

Turning to prestige cosmetics, similar to the third quarter, we saw this category slow from its stellar growth in 2015 and 2016. While certain brands of makeup were very strong, others struggled to comp over significant multi-year increases. We’re optimistic that we can accelerate growth in this category with encouraging newness in the pipeline. We’re currently updating our prestige cosmetics assortment…

Introducing Chanel will also distract a bit from some drama. Ulta has recently been besieged with bad press and lawsuits relating to accusations of reselling used, returned products. There is currently both a class action suit and a stockholder suit pending against the company. Dillon also addressed this on the call, saying, “We are vigorously defending against these lawsuits and taking action to ensure our guests continue to have the highest confidence in the integrity and quality of Ulta Beauty’s products and packaging. Let me be clear: We do not sell used, damaged, or expired products, and have zero tolerance for any actions that would compromise the integrity of the products we sell.”

Chanel’s logo is certainly one of the most recognizable ones in the world, and both Chanel and Ulta are clearly betting that that will bring in the beauty junkies.

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