Cult Beauty 

Who are they?

Founded in 2008, Alexia Inge and Jessica De Luca embarked on a journey to create an online retailer for all make up and skin care brands to call a home (Cult Beauty, 2018). From starting in a basement flat, Cult Beauty has grown to become one of the top ten fastest-growing business in the UK (Fast Track). They currently hold over 200 brands from all over the world and continue to grow not only nationwide but internationally.

Competitors 

As the beauty industry is ever growing, there has been a substantial amount of competitors, not just in terms of physical locations but within the online community. As Simeon (1999) states, a firm must have a website that attracts consumers as well as inform and position them as a brand.  Cult Beauty’s largest rivals, ‘Beauty Bay‘ and ‘Feel Unique‘, both have advantages as they were established in 1999 and 2005 respectively.  Beauty Bay is the highest earning online make-up retailer with a whopping £69.4 million received in annual revenue. Feel Unique, follow closely behind with a £62.1 million. All three retailers are currently setup within in the United Kingdom, however all deliver worldwide.

 

 

 

 

 

As can be seen above, all three sites have a very similar layout in regards to having a banner on the top of the home page that entices the consumer somehow. Whether it is with free delivery or 15% discount codes. All three websites have chosen a visual banner with all the different brands they hold. Interestingly Beauty Bay is the only website not to have a continuous slide show on their banner but instead opted for single images.

Cult Beauty and Feel Unique have both chosen a more simple and refined approach to exhibit all their tabs for the products whereas Beauty Bay has a drop down menu on the top left hand side.

The biggest differences that these online retailers have are the brands that they hold and the influencers they choose to use. Beauty Bay is known to be one of the only UK retailers to hold Jeffree Star Cosmetics which has created a unique selling point (USP) for them. With over 11.5 million Youtube subscribers, Jeffree has managed to take over the make-up world not only with his products but by his make-up tutorials. Thus, allowing for a large percentage of his followers to only buy his products from Beauty Bay. (Appendix 2)

Feel Unique has their USP in terms of being the only make-up retailer to associate with UNiDAYS (An app which gives students discounts). Therefore, although Cult Beauty and Feel Unique hold a lot of the same brands, Feel Unique will have an advantage as they offer the same products for less to the student demographic.

Market Segmentation 

Demographics as a whole for the make-up industry has changed over the past decade. With social media, beauty influencers have risen as whole and some have even gone on to create their own make-up lines (Huda Beauty, Zoella, etc). Due to the increase of social media usage a lot of girls are starting to wear make-up at a much younger age, thus altering the age range from what would normally be 15-85 to 12-85 years old. Make-up is also no longer seen solely as a female product, with a lot of male make-up artists creating a name for themselves (Jeffree Star, James Charles and Manny MUA).

As seen in Appendix 3, the demographics for Cult Beauty have extended beyond gender and age. This is due to make-up becoming a universal tool for people to express themselves.

Customer Journey’s 

As seen in Appendix 4, both persona’s go through a very different experience when buying a product. The older demographics tend to rely on the information that they receive from the website directly and like to be able to physically touch a product before it is bought. However, younger demographics such as Jason, prefer to watch the product reviews online before going directly onto the website to buy the product.

The author is a University of Brighton student and any copyright was unintentional. All the information was sourced from a variety of websites. Please contact the author to find out more.