The Ugly Truth About Amazon Beauty

Amazon has never been the most attractive of sites, but lately it's been very concerned with beauty. Not the aesthetics of its page design, but the business of selling cosmetics and skin care on them.

Starting today, Amazon customers can shop Lady Gaga's Haus Laboratories makeup line. Earlier this summer, Amazon announced the Amazon Professional Beauty Store as a place for salons and stylists to source products. And a few weeks before that, it put forth its own skincare line, called Belei, whose ingredients are based on search terms from beauty buyers on the site.

Despite all this beauty, the outlook isn't so rosy. Amazon still has to contend with its dystopic reputation, the counterfeit cosmetics that run rampant in its search results, and getting outshone by its many competitors.

Lady Gaga and her longtime makeup artist Sarah Tanno developed Haus Laboratories as an Amazon-exclusive brand. That the brand is cruelty-free and vegan aligns with the progressive values of the performer's fan base. But buying products from a behemoth that is known for the mistreatment of warehouse workers and propping up policies like immigrant detention is not.

lady gaga selling her makeup line exclusively on amazon, a company that's been treating its workers like garbage and financially supporting ICE, and asking people to cross the prime day picket line to preorder it? yea that's disappointing stefani

— isabel (@isihadley) July 15, 2019

The full line launches today, but there was a limited offering of products on Prime Day. But because they are pre-orders and there was plenty of time to manufacture them before a September ship date, nothing sold out. Selling out is usually the best way to boast about a successful line, something makeup moguls Kylie Jenner and Jeffree Star, who run out of inventory in minutes if not seconds, know well. Haus Laboratories' full collection has been available for a few hours now and so far all items are still in stock.

Exercise Extreme Caution

Amazon's biggest beauty play, though, is going after the beauty-supply market with the Amazon Professional Beauty Store. It sells supplies for stylists and salons, which have to provide their license information to buy anything.

Amazon touts the convenience of its broad offerings and free shipping, but the site is infamous for third-party sellers who hawk counterfeit beauty products. Amazon says it uses machine learning and automated systems to detect potentially counterfeit products. "We investigate any claim of counterfeit thoroughly, including removing the item, permanently removing the bad actor, pursuing legal action or working with law enforcement as appropriate," a spokesperson said. But despite policies and procedures, the reality is that consumers can still wind up with questionable products.

One of the reasons to buy a full-price product from a salon or to use the services of a stylist is that they are often approved to sell and use authentic products. Professionals and customers should exercise extreme caution in buying beauty items on Amazon because products that look perfect in their packaging can still be fake and contain toxic chemicals.

I once purchased perfume from Amazon and though the packaging looked genuine, the smell was significantly off, a sign it was fake. Amazon refunded my money and didn't even require that I ship back what I received, but it was an object lesson.

It can be far harder to confirm that a hair mask or lipstick is authentic; if they're not, the consequences can be harsh. "Phony cosmetics often contain things such as arsenic, beryllium, and cadmium (all known carcinogens) along with high levels of aluminum and dangerous levels of bacteria. Some of these products have caused conditions like acne, psoriasis, rashes, and eye infections," the FBI warns.

A Low-Key Push for Belei

There is one beauty brand on Amazon that you can be sure is the real deal, though, because the company itself manufactures it. Belei is free of sulfates, parabens, and phthalates; is dermatologist-tested; cruelty-free; and has recycled and recyclable packaging. This might be Amazon's best move in beauty to date and though it's presented in a pretty low-key way on the site, the brand knew enough to launch with an influencer-backed, bubble-filled party.

Its biggest misstep with Belei is that it's not marketed as clean beauty, a huge industry trend of which Amazon's top beauty competitors—from Sephora to Target—are taking full advantage.

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Amazon is making the same mistakes in beauty that it has with fashion: it doesn't innovate and it doesn't take advantage of its strengths. Haus Laboratories is a half-hearted attempt at capturing the superstar status of Rihanna's Fenty line, Amazon's professional beauty supply store is a bit amateur, and Belei is a more ordinary The Ordinary.

Amazon squandered what was once its greatest strength in beauty: being one of the few sources where people outside of Korea could buy K-beauty. Instead of partnering for American exclusives or playing up its products, it ceded the market to specialty shops like Peach and Lily and Soko Glam.

The online beauty market is littered with failures. Birchbox is struggling to get beyond the subscription box, Gloss.com was long ago bought (and shut down) by Estée Lauder, Beauty.com was bought and subsumed into Walgreens, Eve.com is long gone and its founder has moved on, and Beautyjungle.com is grown over. Amazon is still unbeatable in retail, but when it comes to beauty, its future looks untamed and uncertain.

Editor's Note: This story was updated on 9/18 with comment from Amazon.

Sarah Owusu's paintings put African and black beauty front and centre