Cosmetics see shift in market performance

For the past 52 weeks, cosmetics were a $7.1 billion industry, and the eye, facial and lip subcategories accounted for $4.7 billion of those sales. Within the drug store channel alone, cosmetics experienced $2.7 billion in sales, and the eye, face and lip subcategories saw $1.8 billion. DSN has partnered with Competitive Promotion Report (CPR) and IRI to create a series of exclusive reports, and this article examines the market performance of top brands within those subcategories for the past 27 months. The top four brands overall in the cosmetics category were L’Oréal, Maybelline, CoverGirl and Revlon.

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With $759 million in sales for the drug channel, the eye category experienced the highest dollar sales in cosmetics during the last 27 months. The top two subcategories for sales were mascara and eye liner with $330 million and $245 million, respectively. For the mascara market, Revlon was not a significant player, though Almay performed much better. However, eye liner saw high amounts of sales for all of the four top brands. For eye liners, the Revlon ColorStay and CoverGirl Perfect Point brands decreased the average percentage of discount for the past year compared with the previous year, while L’Oréal Infallible and Maybelline Unstoppable increased the average percentage of discount. CoverGirl Perfect Point Eye Liner remained the most discounted brand of the four, and Revlon ColorStay Eye Liner had the highest share of the eye liner market.



In the cosmetics facial category, the foundations subcategory experienced the highest dollar sales ($362 million) for the past 27 months. In this category, the retail margin percentages remained fairly constant for the past two years, with CoverGirl TruBlend seeing the highest change with a nearly 6% increase. Maybelline Dream Liquid consistently saw the highest retail margin percentages for both years, and L’Oréal True Match had the highest share of the foundation market.



With $245 million, lipsticks had the highest dollar sales by far in the cosmetic lip category. Despite the fact that Revlon’s Super Lustrous and Maybelline’s Color Sensational lipsticks had very similar retail and list prices, Revlon maintained the highest average share of the lipstick market. Maybelline did have a high average retail margin percentage of 45.9% for the two-year period, while Revlon saw a much lower, 35.3%, average retail margin.