How to Scale Your Beauty Brand with a 3PL

As more and more businesses expand their D2C segment, so too does consumer appetite for discovering their next beauty products (and then repeat-buying them) online, bringing with it a greater need for a fulfilment provider that can support your business as it grows.

Many customers also want to see, smell and feel beauty products in person before making a purchase, so it’s equally important that your products are available in stores. As demand for your products grows, so too will the importance of having that visibility and carefully planned stock availability in physical stores. 

This is where an experienced 3PL that offers omnichannel fulfilment comes into its own; ensuring  your brand is equally well-represented online and in-store means you can be available wherever your customers are researching and shopping, and can grow your brand on multiple fronts.

Learn more about high-quality fulfilment services for your beauty brand.

Finding a 3PL that meets your needs

To meet the increasing demand for beauty products worldwide, it’s essential to work with a 3PL you can trust. A well-chosen 3PL should have many years of experience supporting fast-growth beauty brands, and should feel like an extension of your own business, with shared goals and values.  

Logistics

As your beauty business grows, they will be able to handle the extra sales reliably, working closely with you to support changes to sales volumes, and handling seasonal peaks. 

See our peak season hub for more information about making sure you and your 3PL are ready for the increase in sales during your peak times of year. 

Presentation

Giving your products the ‘wow’ factor they deserve when opened by your customers is an all-important part of the beauty and cosmetics buying experience. If your beauty brand still fulfils orders in-house or works with a small-scale 3PL, you might find that features such as personalisation, sustainable packaging and a memorable unboxing experience are difficult to incorporate into your existing offering. 

Partnering with a 3PL that offers these value-added services will allow you to present your products in a way that is aligned with your brand values, which in turn can help you scale as a brand. See how our personalisation services and sector-leading fulfilment became an important part of Charlotte Tilbury’s growth in the UK and across the globe.

Emerging and growing markets

As sales continue to grow, it’s important to think about where those sales are coming from; as Gen Z has more influence and disposable income, a huge amount of sales performance is expected to come from this demographic in the coming years. 

Gen Z are already the second biggest buyer of beauty products online, and as they continue to grow as a segment, different messaging and USPs may become more important. Gen Z shoppers have already shown to be more conscious about sustainability than previous generations, with beauty products being among the most expected to showcase this. 

Partnering with a 3PL that upholds these values will be a valuable asset as more and more consumers shift their focus towards environmentally-friendly, sustainable products, packaging and transport. 

The shopping habits of Gen Z are also not to be under-estimated, with 41% wanting to make a purchase in-person, further showing the need for a 3PL that can provide omnichannel fulfilment that can scale with increasing demand.

Subscription services in the form of beauty boxes also remain an important emerging market within the beauty sector, forecasted to reach £92 million per year by 2025.

Reaching international markets

Expanding into international markets can be a huge area for potential growth, but will rely heavily on your fulfilment provider for support. One of the many reasons our clients choose ILG is our managed multi-carrier delivery service, which offers competitive pricing combined with guidance from our expert teams to deliver our customers’ products to over 240 countries and territories around the world. For businesses that trade with customers located in the EU, fulfilment centres based in the EU greatly reduce the higher shipping costs and customs delays. A report by Oxford Economics, commissioned by the British Beauty Council, details how changes to regulations following Brexit are found to have already cost the UK beauty industry more than £850 million since 2017.

If your key markets are in the UK and EU, our international fulfilment centres mean that we’re perfectly placed to get products distributed to your customers without having to worry about the expense and extra lead times that are so often seen when trying to export from a UK-only distribution partner.

ILG is already helping multiple UK brands overcome the logistical headaches caused by Brexit, and take full advantage of the huge EU e-commerce market. We run two high-spec fulfilment centres in Western Poland (close to the border with Germany), with a new bespoke 40,000m2 unit opening in 2024.

To Conclude

As any business grows, the importance of partnering with a 3PL that has an excellent reputation for consistency, quality and support increases too. Entering a partnership with a business you’re confident you will be able to work with in the long term, that shares your values and can help you scale means that the sky’s the limit when it comes to growing your beauty business.

At ILG we’re proud to have played such an important role in the continued growth of many beauty brands, including Charlotte Tilbury, Trinny London and Jones Road Beauty, all of whom needed to work with a fulfilment provider that was flexible and could scale with them as their businesses grew.

If your beauty business has plans to grow, either in terms of your product offering or scale of operations, it’s important to work with a 3PL you can rely on. Find out more about our fulfilment services for beauty brands, and get in touch to see how we can help you scale.