Fulfillment Services for Health and Beauty Brands to Improve Customer Experience

Last Updated: June 18, 2024

Different ecommerce verticals face different problems and pain points. Ecommerce brands in the health and beauty category have specific needs to manage their supply chain, meet customer demand, and maintain consistent sales volume. 

On top of having products that work flawlessly, beauty businesses often also need to ensure their marketing, unboxing experience, and brand appeal is better than average. This means they often need to rely on fulfillment projects like bundling, customized messages, branded packaging, and specific kitting work to keep customers coming back for more. 

For high-growth beauty and health brands looking to stand out from the crowd, here are some fulfillment and supply chain tips.  

What are the biggest hurdles beauty brands face?

Businesses that sell cosmetics, beauty products, or health and wellness related goods need to have high appeal, remain competitive in a saturated market, and they need to adhere to strict compliance and regulatory guidelines.  

Here are some high-level pain points that most beauty brands face:  

1. Product Differentiation: The beauty market is highly saturated, making it difficult for brands to stand out among competitors. Creating unique product offerings and compelling brand stories is crucial to attract and retain customers. 
2. Scaling Up and Down Quickly: When Kim Kardashian organically posts about your product, you’re going to get a significant order volume spike overnight. Your operations team needs to be able to respond perfectly, and also appropriately scale back down when the spike has subsided.
3. Personalization: Beauty products are often personal and tailored to individual preferences. Ecommerce brands struggle to provide personalized recommendations and experiences that match the diverse needs of their customers. 
4. Regulatory Compliance: The cosmetics industry is subject to various regulations and compliance requirements, particularly regarding product ingredients, labeling, and safety standards. Ensuring compliance across different markets adds complexity to ecommerce operations. 
5. Seasonal Trends and Inventory Management: Beauty trends and seasonal fluctuations in demand can lead to inventory challenges, such as overstocking or understocking certain products. Ecommerce brands must forecast demand accurately and manage inventory effectively to avoid stockouts or excess inventory. 
6. Customer Experience: Providing a seamless and enjoyable online shopping experience is essential for retaining customers in the competitive beauty ecommerce landscape. This includes user-friendly website design, intuitive navigation, and responsive customer support. 
7. Sustainability and Ethical Practices: With growing consumer awareness of environmental and ethical issues, beauty ecommerce brands are under pressure to adopt sustainable practices throughout their supply chain, from sourcing ingredients to packaging and distribution. 
8. Competition from Influencers and Social Commerce: Influencers and social media platforms play a significant role in shaping beauty trends and influencing purchasing decisions. Ecommerce brands must navigate this landscape by leveraging influencer partnerships and engaging with consumers on social commerce platforms effectively. 

Fulfillment Services to Help Beauty Brands Scale

For cosmetics products, health and wellness companies, getting your products packaged perfectly can make-or-break your customer retention and business scalability.  

Seamless Omnichannel

Many beauty and wellness brands rely on influencers and experiential marketing campaigns to promote their products and retain customer loyalty. This means being creative with how customers interact with products, and it often leads to innovative packaging and off-the-map shipping.  

Brands that need to reach these specific but varied audiences—whether it’s single influencers across the country, or in-person product pop-ups in targeted areas—beauty brands need to have seamless omnichannel fulfillment. They need a logistics and fulfillment operation that can say ‘Yes!’ to literally any type of fulfillment. 

One of the best ways to ensure you’re reaching every audience you can is to rely on a tech-enabled logistics provider. Successful beauty brands will have a fulfillment partner who can automate a seamless order fulfillment flow, whether buyers are on Shopify, your brand website, Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, or Target.com.  

Lot Control

Lot control is a quality control measure used by beauty brands, cosmetics, health product manufacturers, and other industries to track and manage batches or lots of products throughout the manufacturing, distribution, and sales processes. Each lot consists of a specific quantity of products produced together under uniform conditions, often identified by a unique lot number or batch code. 

Being able to track specific batches of products is important for a few reasons:  

• Quality assurance: Health and beauty products are used on the body and sometimes ingested, meaning they need to be of utmost freshness and quality.  
• Regulatory compliance: Many regulatory agencies, such as the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in the United States, require cosmetics and health product manufacturers to implement lot control systems as part of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) regulations. Lot tracking helps companies comply with regulatory requirements related to product safety, labeling, and recall procedures. 
• Product recalls: Any product defects, contamination, or formulation errors need to be taken off the market immediately for public health and safety; lot control is the best system to ensure that is possible.  
• Counterfeit prevention: Lot control can serve as a deterrent against counterfeit products entering the market. By implementing secure lot tracking systems and utilizing unique identifiers, brands can verify product authenticity and protect their brand reputation from counterfeiters. 

Dangerous Goods Labeling and Handling

Health and beauty products that contain hazardous or potentially harmful ingredients may require dangerous goods (DG) labeling and handling to ensure safe transportation, storage, and usage. It is imperative to work with a 3PL with the credentials to handle these dangerous goods products. If you ship DG items without the correct labels or with a service that doesn’t allow DG, there are big consequences which fall to the shipper, not the fulfillment provider.  

Some common health, beauty and wellness products that may need DG handling and labels include;  

1. Nail polish and nail care products, contain flammable ingredients like acetone or ethyl acetate, classified as flammable liquids, which pose a fire hazard and require careful handling and storage.  
2. Hair dyes and bleaches, contain chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide, ammonia, or p-Phenylenediamine (PPD), classified as corrosive substances or oxidizing agents, which can be corrosive, irritant, or toxic if not handled properly. 
3. Aerosol products like hairsprays, deodorants, and spray-on cosmetics contain compressed gases or flammable propellants such as butane or propane, classified as flammable aerosols need to be properly labeled to prevent leakage, ignition, or explosion risks. 
4. Perfumes and fragrances, contain alcohol or volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which can be flammable and pose inhalation hazards in high concentrations.  
5. Chemical peels and exfoliants, contain strong acids such as glycolic acid or salicylic acid, which can be corrosive or irritant to the skin and eyes.  
6. Teeth whitening products, contain hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide, classified as oxidizing agents, which can cause irritation or chemical burns if misused.  
7. Sunscreen products, contain chemical UV filters like oxybenzone or avobenzone, which can be harmful if ingested or cause skin irritation in sensitive individuals.  
8. Lash and brow tinting products, contain dyes or oxidative hair colorants, classified as irritants or sensitizers, that can cause allergic reactions or irritation if not used correctly.  

Branded Packaging 

Branded packaging means leaving your stamp on your products’ package, packing materials, and overall experience your customers of your brand when they order from your company. There are many reasons branded packaging is especially important for beauty brands. It shows off your brand identity, allows customers to connect with your brand’s story and personality, it may give your brand differentiation in a saturated market, and it gives your brand a perceived value that should match your product and customer expectations. What’s more important than getting your packaging perfect is working with a 3PL or fulfillment provider who can support your packaging needs and desires. Not all providers will allow branded packaging as it may involve manual assembly, extra storage space in the warehouse, and may limit your shipping carrier or shipping service options.  

Work with your 3PL on packaging that fits your brand but won’t clog their fulfillment flow. There are many options that are cost-effective, like branded tissue or dunnage, brand color tape, or stickers that help support your customer unboxing experience.  

A Perfect Unboxing Experience  

When a customer opens a product, whether it’s in-store or from their doorstep, every detail needs to match that customer’s expectations of the brand. This is called the unboxing experience, and it goes beyond just the packaging and packing materials used.  

Each product should have special instructions (called work instructions) for the fulfillment assembly line to perfectly pack up products. Visual cues will show how each item must be placed in the packaging—the order when it’s a bundle, the direction of items (label out, logo out, etc), and then any branded materials that should be added as well.  

For health and beauty brands, especially those who want their products to go viral on social media, having a really unique and special unboxing experience is a must.  

This is a big value-added service, one that not all 3PLs will do, or do well. There must be an adherence to high quality at your fulfillment provider to ensure each shipment is exactly the same, whether it’s the first order or the millionth order.  

Partnerships & Promos  

One tried and true marketing tactic that beauty products take is cross promoting their product through brand partnerships.  

Be sure your fulfillment provider offers value added services like inserts and special kitting. Even if you don’t have any huge co-marketing plans now, you may in the future. Whether it’s in the form of product bundles, packaging inserts, samples, or promotional offers you’ll want the cross-selling opportunities to encourage customers to explore additional products, driving sales and increasing average order value. 

Tags: Articles About Value Added Services, DTC, Packaging