Natural ingredient and therapeutic skin care lines, especially brands with moderate price points and attractive packaging, are selling extremely well in chain drug stores.

The first four feet of PayLess’s new skin care planogram are devoted to natural products and boutique lines, like Revlon’s New Age Naturals, Freeman’s Aloe Vera and Beautiful, Cabot’s Natural Skin Care, St. Ives Skin Care, Sleepy Hollow and Mill Creek.

“We rolled it out the first quarter,” says Hope Stone, HBA buyer for the Oregon-based chain, “and we based it on the success of Naturistics. Customers want natural products, and are willing and able to buy them. The key is in the price point.When Revlon cut its prices for New Age Naturals in half, the movement improved substantially. At $4.99, New Age is doing very well for us.

“Freeman’s new items are blowing off the shelf. At $3 and change, people can’t get enough of Beautiful.

“St. Ives is another line that does very well. The 14-ounce pumps in their Botanicals line move very fast. We had a hard job these past few months keeping them and Freeman in stock,” Stone says.

She adds that movement on Pond’s new items has doubled in recent months. Movement of Jergen’s hand and body lotions has also risen dramatically since the new packaging came out, and therapeutic lines like Lubriderm and Eucerin are moving well.

Innovative items growing

High-tech products are also starting to grow. Stone says that Pond’s led with its Science Update promotions featuring Joan Lunden. Jergen’s is also supporting its position in a big way.
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In some parts of the country, especially the Sunbelt, the Banana Boat skin care line is catching on with consumers. One buyer notes that the natural ingredients like aloe vera, Vitamin E and Vitamin A appeal to consumers, and the clear, transparent bottles really make the product “pop out” on the shelf.

In Minneapolis, Snyder Drug’s HBA buyer Paul Carlson likes the new “store brands” that CPI, a major private label manufacturer, is introducing. “They have four or five different boutique lines that you could work with,” he says. “It’s very interesting and down the line, we may do something with that.”

At New York’s Genovese Drug, where skin care products are now merchandised by family in a skin care center, cosmetics buyer Stephanie Hayter says that Revlon and Almay skin care have been doing well, as have smaller specialty lines like West Cabot Clear Perfection, Sudden Change and private label Vitamin E oils.

Formula 405, Plenitude Eye Defense and Wrinkle Cream, single pacquette facial masks from West Cabot and Ardell have also been selling very well. The single pacquette units are just blowing out the doors, says Hayter.

At Thrifty Drug in Los Angeles, HBA buyer Mike Espy says Keri, Lubriderm, St. Ives, Neutrogena, Pond’s, Jergens and Beautiful skin care lines are all doing extremely well in his stores.

Espy says that a line like Beautiful gives Thrifty a chance to “boutique” its HBA department, but he says he needs just a bit more space than he has right now to do it to full effect.

In the specialty segment of skin care, Espy says his sales of CCA’s Sudden Change and West Cabot’s specialty items have also been very strong. “The whole idea of knocking off department store specialty items and selling them in drug stores at reasonable prices is working,” he says.

“Some people think the drug store shopper and the department store shopper are two different people, but I don’t agree with that. I think customers shop both types of stores, so it makes sense to carry specialty items in our presentations.”

Beiersdorf is expanding into some specialty lotions that use advance technology with Nivea Visage. Espy says that Beiersdorf, a German company, “finds what’s doing well in Europe and imports it here.” L’Oreal, a French company, does the same thing of course, most dramatically with Plenitude.

Espy also recently tried a new therapeutic item from Neoteric Cosmetics, a division of Scott’s Liquid Gold. It’s called Alpha Hydrox and it’s a cream and lotion that locks moisture into the skin. “It comes in a bright red container and they’ve done terrific advertising in the Los Angeles market. We feature it in a 24-price floorstand. It’s just done real[ly] well for us.”

More space allocated

Now that many manufacturers with strong moisturizing brands like Oil of Olay, Pond’s, Lubriderm and Plenitude have extended their lines into cleansing products, many drug chains are giving this category more space in their skin care planograms.

Espy says that while sales of the cleansers are not as strong as sales for the moisturizers, in almost all cases these new items do seem to be capturing incremental sales.