Walmart Courts Sustainability Conscious Shoppers With Clean Beauty

Walmart has launched Clean Beauty, an online shop featuring products aimed at environmentally conscious shoppers.

The retail giant announced the rollout Thursday (March 15), noting that the “clean” name comes from the fact that featured products are made without ingredients on its Made Without List (MWL), a lengthy list of chemicals.

“To rigorously develop this list, we reviewed state and federal regulations, consulted suppliers and called on experts such as the Environmental Defense Fund,” Walmart Vice President of Beauty Creighton Kiper said in the announcement.

“And we listened to customers — who increasingly desire products without certain ingredients as well as better transparency around what goes into them.”

Clean Beauty offers products made without “priority chemicals,” the release said — using as examples formaldehyde and PFAS — and is designed to make sure more shoppers can access those products.

To that end the store offers more than 900 items, the company said — and more are being added — with 80% of them selling for under $10.

As PYMNTS’ Karen Webster wrote last month soon after Walmart’s Q4 earnings call, the company’s beauty offerings are an important part of its portfolio, and an area in which the retailer is under threat from rival Amazon.

“Based on how the data is trending, Amazon will soon eclipse Walmart in health and beauty, a category that Walmart’s CFO called out on the Q4 call as both high-margin and a high priority,” Webster wrote.

Health and beauty products make up almost 11% of Walmart’s yearly sales, its second-biggest retail sales contributor. Amazon, meanwhile, has nearly doubled its share of health and beauty sales over the last few years, from 2.5% in 2019 to 5.1% in 2022. Walmart, meanwhile, has seen sales in that category remain flat at around 6%.

Meanwhile, a number of retailers have reported continued demand for beauty products, according to recent reporting by PYMNTS.

For example, Ulta Beauty announced last week that it had seen record sales for the previous year, with annual revenues exceeding $10 billion for the first time, its annual net income surpassing $1 billion, and its Ultamate Rewards membership topping 40 million.

“Consumer engagement with beauty is stronger than ever and is more connected with wellness,” CEO Dave Kimbell said during an earnings call.

“These factors give us confidence that the growth of the U.S. beauty category will remain healthy but moderate to the higher end of the category’s historical annual growth rate of between 2% and 5%, barring a major economic event.”

Other companies reporting strong demand for beauty products include e.l.f. Beauty, which said last month it had recorded 49% net sales growth and completed its 16th consecutive quarter of net sales growth in the final quarter of 2022.

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