One of my favorite stores to shop for my professional clothes – clothes that I have to wear in the law office where I work (yes, I have to dress in business attire, which I’m none too happy about, but sometimes it feels good to look nice!) is New York and Company, formerly known as Lerner, at least when I was a teenager and a young twenty-something.
I noticed the last time I was in the store, buying massive quantities of clothes while they were deeply discounted for the Christmas holiday, something I like to splurge on every year since it’s a great opportunity, I noticed that they had (what I think is) a new line of beauty products called City Beauty. It looked sort of like the Gap’s beauty and toiletries line, with extremely colorful, simply labeled bottles of creams, lotions, scents and lip balms and glosses.
In other words, your standard run of the mill fare that all the clothing outlets seem to be trying to get a piece of. I also noticed Victoria’s Secret has dramatically expanded their beauty line the last time I was in there. Problem is, does this stuff every really sell? I don’t know anyone who buys it really, and I’ve never heard anyone rave about a primarily clothing related store’s beauty line.
So I guess my question is, why do these retail outlets keep trying to foray into the beauty market – why not just leave it up to the experts, like Sephora, or Mac, and other superior makeup lines or stores where you can get superior makeup and cosmetic products? The City Beauty line appears to be just a bath and body offering now, but this is the way that Victoria’s Secret started with their beauty line as well, so I bet if they even get modest interest in it, we’ll soon be seeing an expansion into self tanners, eye makeup, hair care products, lipsticks, lip plumping products and other actual cosmetic products.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining – nor have I tried any of these “retail clothing” lines of beauty products. I just wonder how saturated the market will be when women are bombarded with choices even when they shop for clothes now. Genius marketing, or fizzling fad? I guess time will tell!
