Sam's Club – Walmart's "warehouse store" chain (customers pay $40 a year for access to storehouses where the products are displayed on pallets, at "discount" prices) – has just announced that they were introducing a new range of beauty products, SoPhyto. The launch made headlines at WWD recently and deserves reflection.
SoPhyto is a British brand of organic beauty products, certified by the Soil Association. It claims a professional positioning, ethical, emphasizing the use of natural ingredients: until now it was sold in Medispas, medical offices and through e-commerce.
Presented on branded pallets, the SoPhyto products will find themselves next to L'Oreal, Olay, Neutrogena... This initiative raises some interesting questions:
- Sam’s Club has exclusive distribution rights for the U.S.: we see here once again a distributor that has acquired a proprietary beauty offer - not with its own private label - but with a brand with its own authenticity. The products offered have been specially created for Sam's Club.
- The choice of an organic brand certified by an European organism is interesting - in a country that has not been able to dispose of a procedure for real organic certification so far.
- The highlighting of the brand - unusual for Sam's Club - shows the growing importance that the beauty category has for these distributors.
- We may finally ask the question, from the perspective of the brand, how will it manage this positioning, ranging from Medispas and medical offices to discounters...?
