Clinique Happy

Mmmm, love when my wife wears Clinique Happy. Just as nice as Jean Patou Joy with the extra bonus that I don't got bankrupt after she buys it.

The beauty market is weird. At drugstore.com we bought a company (beauty.com) to create a presence in the "high-end" (and high-margin) cosmetics business. But brand is king in beauty, and generally at that time the key brands weren't willing at that time to sell through internet channels they didn't control completely.

I was surprised to learn that, in department stores, the cosmetics counters aren't actually controlled by the department stores. The cosmetics companies almost always design, build and staff their own displays themselves --- all to keep control. And they wanted to duplicate this on the Internet, by actually injecting their web site into ours. A few companies went through all kinds of disastrous integration efforts to make them happy, but mostly they failed.

Instead people resell this stuff on the "grey market". They don't buy from the cosmetics companies directly, but rather grab up inventory from salons that are closing or other similar sources. That's why you'll see the selection of high-end brands on sites like Amazon and drugstore.com be so scattered --- they rarely have a consistent supply of the whole product line.

Anyways, I thought it was interesting.