This week, I look at how beauty and wellness brands are approaching the first wave of holiday sales including this week’s Amazon Days, Walmart Deals and Target Circle Week. I also check in with experts at Constant Contact and Mintel for insights into the holiday sales marketing strategies that are working now. Additionally, CeraVe sponsors the NBA, Charlotte Tilbury taps Celine Dion for a holiday campaign, and Dyson’s profits drop 47% amid global economic turbulence.
Brands lean into big box sales events as holiday shopping gets underway
The first major online holiday shopping events of Q4 began this week.
This includes Amazon Prime Big Deal Days and Walmart Deals, which both kick off today and run through Wednesday and Saturday, respectively. Meanwhile, Target Circle Week kicked off Sunday and will also run until Saturday.
The sales revolve around sweeping markdowns, with beauty and wellness a large part of the offerings. Most promotions hover at 20-30% off.
At Amazon, InterParfums is running 20-25% off for its brands including MCM, Oscar de la Renta and Guess; while L’Oréal is discounting at 20% for Garner, Maybelline and L’Oréal Paris.
Many brands are topping out at 20%, including JVN Hair, Dr. Diamond and Obagi, while Sulwahsoo, Biossance and Epicurean are pushing into the 30% off discount. Hair care is experiencing some of the deepest cuts — mainstays like Christophe Robin and Joico are 40% off — while K-beauty darling Medicube is presenting bespoke discounts that range from 5-40% based on product. Shoppers must have an Amazon Prime membership to cash in on the deals.
Walmart is offering discounts on thousands of items, as well, with no membership needed. However, Walmart+ members receive a five-hour headstart on shopping the deals. The company is leading its beauty and wellness promotion with doorbuster deals on CK One fragrance and Oral B electric toothbrushes at 20% and 40% off, respectively.
Target is leading its promotion with a 40% off “deal of the day” that will be occupied by Apple, GM, Hydroflask and Olive & June, the latter of which held the spot Monday. Other deals available across the week include 30% off hair tools like Unbrush, and 20% off fragrance and skin-care like Fine-ry and La Roche Posay.
BOGO, or “buy one get one free”, is also a big strategy for Target: It’s offering BOGO on Old Spice, Olly supplements, Dove products and many more health, wellness and beauty offerings.
Despite the economic turbulence that has kept consumer confidence floundering this year, consumers are eager to start their holiday shopping. Around 76% of U.S. consumers say gift giving is an important tradition, with 42% expecting to shop for winter holidays before Thanksgiving, according to data released by Mintel market research company earlier this year.
Brand leaders have high hopes for beauty this year: Around 37% of Amazon shoppers purchased a beauty or personal care product for a gift last year, according to Amazon. This is just 11 points under the percentage of shoppers that purchase toys and games (48%) and 3 points above jewelry and accessories gifts, which were purchased by 33% of shoppers during Amazon’s 2024 holiday sales.
It certainly seems like all signs point to this being a runaway season for digital sales: According to data released by NielsenIQ last week, online beauty sales are growing nine times faster than in-store sales this year, with digital beauty in North America up 21% in 2025.
“There’s so much noise out there right now, and there’s so much FOMO [within digital marketing] feeling like you need to be everywhere and do everything,” said Dave Charest, director of small business success for Constant Contact, a marketing firm that works with 600,000 businesses. Instead, he tells his clients to focus on converting social media followers to email subscribers to SMS users. That’s because around 75% said SMS outperformed other channels.
In a recent study that surveyed 2,500 business leaders in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., the team found that 37% have increased their marketing budgets this year. Charest told Glossy that, when looking at health and wellness as a whole, 1 in 3 say SMS is a top-performing channel, which is far higher than any other industry.
However, messaging too much about sales and holiday promotions can have a negative impact. “We often recommend people think about giving [SMS and email shoppers] three chances: an announcement, a reminder and a last chance, because one and done doesn’t really get it done,” Charest said. “There’s usually a sweet spot between a week out and just before the sale is happening or ending — that’s where a lot of action happens.”
Executive moves:
- Marla Beck has stepped down from her CEO role at BeautyHealth, patent company to brands like Hydrafacial, SkinStylus and Keravive. Beck is best known for co-founding Bluemercury in 1999. Pedro Malha is the new CEO and president as of October 1. His CV includes the healthcare company Abbott and Johnson & Johnson.
- Aesthetics and skin-care company Revance, parent company of PanOxyl, StriVectin and Blue Lizard, has made several new executive appointments. These include Scott Leffler as CFO, Kira Schwartz as chief legal officer and Nick Crowe’s promotion to chief operating officer.
- Laxman Narasimhan has joined the board of directors at biotech company Pendulum Therapeutics. He is the former CEO of Starbucks and Reckitt. Pendulum sells wellness products like oral probiotics and is best known for having actress Halle Berry as its face and chief communications officer.
News to know:
- Profits at home appliance and hair-tool company Dyson fell 47% in 2024 to reach $756 million, according to financial filings published on Sept. 29. Despite the tumble, the company reached a record high in sales volume, selling more than 20 million products in its 2024. This marks Dyson’s first sales drop in 22 years. The company cited slower economic growth and reduced consumer confidence as key reasons for the drop.
- Consumers are embracing fitness trackers like Oura ring, Apple watch, Whoop and others, according to new data from Circana. Year-to-date U.S. retail sales revenue of fitness tracking devices has grown 88% compared to a year ago, with “smart rings” accounting for 75% of total fitness tracker revenue this year. As reported last month, Oura Health Oy, maker of the Oura health and fitness ring, is closing in on a roughly $11 billion valuation after selling about 3 million rings over the past year.
- L’Oréal Group-owned CeraVe is the official skin- and hair-care sponsor of the NBA. It comes on the heels of a range of new beauty and personal care sponsorships across the WNBA, which wraps its season by October 17. The 2025-26 NBA season begins on October 21.
- Celine Dion is the newest face of Puig-owned Charlotte Tilbury. Dion will star in the brand’s holiday campaign alongside model Jourdan Dunn and creator Quenlin Blackwell. Dion’s song “I’m Alive” will be used in the advertisements, and the stars will wear a selection of new Charlotte Tilbury products.
- Dollar Shave Club may soon return to the irreverent advertising strategy it launched with in 2011. In an interview with “Fortune,” CEO Larry Bodner said that former parent company Unilever “neutered the voice of the brand.” Unilever purchased the brand for $1 billion in 2016 then offloaded it to Nexus Capital Management in 2023 for an undisclosed amount. “They tried to make it too corporate, and they lost that irreverent, ‘on the edge’ humor,” Bodner said in the publication. “And when you do that, you lose the consumer.”
- Coperni, the high-fashion clothing line that sells at FRWD, Farfetch and Moda Operandi, has released a line of athleisure basics infused with probiotics and prebiotics meant to soak into the dermis to provide skin-care benefits. The line launched with leggings, a bodysuit and a top and debuted at Paris Fashion Week on Monday. The collection is called C+ and ranges in price from $175-$211. The line was manufactured by HeiQ, a material innovation company based in Switzerland.
- Harry’s — the men’s personal care brand owned by Mammoth Brands and sold at Target, Walmart, Walgreens and others — has entered fine fragrance. The three scents will retail for $35 and build on the brand’s body-wash scents.
Stat of the week:
China remains a dynamic beauty market, especially in the e-commerce space, according to a new report from market research company Circana. According to the firm, China’s prestige beauty e-commerce market grew 9% year-over-year during the first half of the year. Standouts include a 17% sales spike in fragrance and a 16% increase in hair-care sales in the region.
In the headlines:
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Listen in:
Our second-annual Glossy Pop Awards is one place where our team recognizes the best and most culturally relevant beauty and fashion campaigns, people, products and brands. In the latest episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, we welcome three esteemed beauty executives to discuss the secret sauce behind their Glossy Pop Award-winning campaigns.
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