E-Tailer The Natives Co Looks To Make Its Luxury Beauty Selection More Affordable

With inflation squeezing consumers, luxury clean beauty e-tailer The Natives Co is seeking to add lower priced brands to its assortment.

“I’ve been doing a pricing analysis for the last few months across a lot of the brands that I would like to work with,” says Vanessa Noy, co-founder of The Natives Co, winner of a 2022 Beacon Award. “I’m asking myself, ‘How do I find brands that still represent a feeling of luxury, but won’t compromise my current customer base and will help us acquire new customers?’”

Launched in 2019, Sydney-based The Natives Co carries 58 international and Australian brands across skincare, makeup, haircare, bath and body, fragrance and wellness. Among the brands it stocks are Bloomeffects, Christophe Robin, Hanami, Au Naturale, Balm Balm, Nails Inc, Madame Gabriela, Salt & Stone, Flora Mirabilis and Little Urchin. 

Constituting 30% of the e-tailer’s sales, makeup and bath and body are the categories most likely to dip in price in the coming months. Noy aims to bring in products that retail for about a third less than what’s currently sold by The Natives Co. For example, she’s zeroing in on makeup items ranging from 55 to 65 Australian dollars or roughly $37 to $44 and body care products under 50 Australian dollars or roughly $34.

Balancing the assortment effectively between established and emerging brands is another new merchandising strategy. International brands are big draws for The Natives Co. The e-tailer has introduced Amala, Venn, Saint Cosmetics and Luxe Botanics to Australian beauty shoppers, and British brand Votary Skincare is a recent entrant. About a third of The Natives Co’s current assortment is made up of emerging homegrown brands like Kissed Earth and Maho. 

“Australians are very interested in both Australian and international brands, and we see that in our shopping basket,” says Noy. “So, we don’t see many challenges getting our customers acquainted with any of the new brands in our lineup. They are very open to it.”

Skincare products containing hyaluronic acid, niacinamide and ceramides have experienced traction on the website, along with formulations combating skin inflammation and redness. Along with topical products, customers are gravitating to at-home skincare devices like the Omnilux Contour Face LED Mask, which is priced at 590 Australian dollars, and Noy expects to enlarge The Native Co’s device repertoire substantially moving forward. 

Shower, bath and grooming products are selling briskly on The Natives Co. Noy says that sunscreens and sunless tanning products have registered double-digit sales jumps year-over-year. Customers are snapping up scalp treatments and mineral makeup, too. 

To evaluate brands, The Natives Co relies on a framework that scrutinizes ingredient formulation, sourcing and manufacturing practices, and environmental and social impacts. Noy says the e-tailer’s customers are well-informed about clean beauty and looking for brands that substantiate claims with before-and-after comparisons and third-party certifications like ACO (Australian Certified Organic), Ecocert, Leaping Bunny and USDA Organic. 

The Natives Co has doubled down on its strict clean beauty positioning. Noy says, “Our knowledge on formulation, skin function and on certifications has really resonated with our customer. They tell us that we are the only place they can shop because they don’t have to filter through brands that aren’t clean or cruelty-free.”

The Natives Co aspires to secure exclusive agreements with brands. When a brand nabs high-profile retail distribution elsewhere, it’s cause for concern at the e-tailer. “We’ve had to sort of reassess how we work with brands because we obviously see our sales change as the brands expand into other retailers,” says Noy. “There’s a cannibalization that happens when brands do that here. Australia has a small population and more distribution doesn’t necessarily mean more sales.”

Value-driven promotions are important elements of The Natives Co’s offering. The luxury skincare brand Venn launched on the site with a 5-piece gift-with-purchase set that bolstered awareness and sales. It’s now the e-tailer’s bestselling brand. A similar strategy has been implemented for Votary’s launch.

So far, the tactics have been successful. The site’s sales growth has accelerated yearly. Between 2021 and 2022, sales rose 92%.

The Natives Co didn’t start out online. After decades as a fashion buyer, Noy and her sister Leesa Gibbs established the business in November 2019 as a brick-and-mortar location in Bondi Beach that stocked 50 clean beauty brands. The pandemic forced the store to shutter permanently. Noy says, “We did a lot of quick learning and pivoted our financial resources and our time onto online so that we could still make our financial targets that we’d set for ourselves with the store.”

Noy envisions The Natives Co returning to brick-and-mortar retail in the next five years with luxury skincare at the heart of the format. She says, “The skincare piece of our business is incredibly important in that we have to make it easier for our customer to shop across the category and fulfill her needs.”

Its largest category by size, skincare accounts for 47% of The Natives Co’s assortment. In the past year, skincare constituted 40% of its product sales and around 54% of its overall revenue. Skincare demand has softened, though, as shoppers become increasingly price-conscious and divert spending to experiences and makeup. 

To boost the category in the short term, Noy is exploring the possibility of implementing digital tools matching customers to skincare products that are right for them. In the long term, a physical store would blend skincare products with services like facials and light therapy treatments. Noy says, “It would be about complementing the brand and tying retail and self-care rituals together.”