Assortment of Bath & Body Works products.
Courtesy of Bath & Body Works
Bath & Body Works With no minimum shipping charges, Champagne Toast Body Wash is now available with just a click. Amazon Prime member.
The mall-favorite brand is offering some of its best-selling fragrances, body washes, hand soaps, and candles to Amazon shoppers in the US. This selection is also eligible for Prime shipping.
According to Euromonitor, Amazon is the number one online destination for U.S. beauty buyers, accounting for 47% of the U.S. online beauty and personal care market in 2024. Sephora is in second place with a 9% market share. Euromonitor estimates that 39% of all beauty and personal care sales are made online.
“Opening our first official brand storefront on Amazon puts us directly in the shoes of consumers,” Bath & Body Works CEO Daniel Heaf told CNBC. “It’s important to meet them where they already shop.”
The Amazon launch marks the latest effort by Columbus, Ohio-based Bath & Body Works to expand access points for its customers. Last year, the company started selling its products in stores on college campuses, and now has more than 1,000 stores. This is the company’s first sales location outside of its approximately 2,600 owned and franchised stores and its own website.
Mr. Heaf joined Bath & Body Works in May after being removed from his role as Nike’s chief transformation and strategy officer by CEO Elliott Hill.
Heaf recently announced his “return plan.” [Bath & Body Works] He calls it a “consumer-first equation” with four pillars: developing disruptive and innovative products, reigniting the brand, winning in the marketplace, and operating with speed and efficiency.
Heaf said the partnership with Amazon is “the first of many milestones we plan to achieve this year for that strategy.”
Prior to official in-store availability, Bath & Body Works products were sold on Amazon through third-party resellers.
Now, the company is trying to rebuild its brand story on Amazon and its marketplace sales, Heaf said.
Amazon: friend or foe?
Amazon has many first-party relationships with various brands; nike There are few examples of retailers that design, manufacture, and sell products on their site entirely in-house, until Calvin Klein uses wholesale partnerships as part of its business model.
For so-called vertically integrated brands like Bath & Body Works, Amazon increasingly serves as a skilled logistics partner rather than a retailer.
gapJ. Crew and Everlane are similarly vertically integrated, selling a small number of branded products on Amazon.
In 2022, Gap began selling what it calls “core necessities for the whole family” through a wholesale relationship in which Amazon owns and sells Prime-eligible products. Gap said its goal is to reach new and lapsed customers and provide existing shoppers with the convenience of “key necessities.”
Under Bath & Body Works’ new deal with Amazon, the brand will retain ownership of its inventory and control pricing, but will tap into Amazon’s fulfillment partner network for Prime eligibility.
Everlane declined to comment on its partnership with Amazon. J.Crew did not respond to a request for comment.
Jewelry company Kendra Scott has a full-time store on Amazon, although the company initially opposed the partnership, but the company had wholesale relationships with other retailers. Macy’s And Nordstrom. But over time, the brand came to view Amazon less as a competitive threat and more as a new opportunity to reach shoppers, said a person familiar with the company’s decision-making who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal affairs.
Bath & Body Works makes it easy for shoppers to order on their website. The company lowered the threshold for free shipping to $50 from $100 last month.
Still, Heaf acknowledged, “We know we’re never going to compete with Amazon in terms of the Prime network. No one offers next-day delivery. That’s not our core business. So by joining Amazon, we think we’re making our site more competitive, but we recognize that our job is not to build a fulfillment network that can operate at Amazon’s speed.”
