Skincare Masks Are Getting Caught Up In Amazon’s Efforts To Stop Face Mask Price Gouging

For Refresh Skin Therapy, doing business on Amazon amid the coronavirus pandemic has been a rollercoaster ride.

A major dip in the rollercoaster ride was having its bestseller, Fruit Acid 15% Gel Peel with Kojic, removed from the giant e-commerce platform for a few days in late March. The product appears to have been taken down as part of Amazon’s effort to combat price gouging by sellers of surgical face masks intended to stem the spread of the virus. The e-tailer is blocking new listings of face masks and scouring existing listings for face masks that seem to violate its fair pricing policy prohibiting setting prices that are significantly higher than other recent prices on similar products.

Joanna Shu, founder and COO of Refresh Skin Therapy, explains the skincare brand’s peel got “caught up in an automated removal net we suspect, but the reality is that our product is a facial mask—i.e. a gel peel for skin—not a N95 facial shield mask. That type of thing happens all the time.” After alerting Amazon that its peel isn’t a transmission prevention tool, Refresh Skin Therapy’s product listing was reinstated. Only about 10% of the brand’s sales are conducted through Amazon, and Shu says it’s been shifting away from the e-commerce website because of lack of control and deficiencies in brand-building capabilities, issues reinforced by the gel peel deletion.

Refresh Skin Therapy’s experience isn’t unique. Skincare brand Purvari hasn’t been permitted to onboard its Advanced Nourishing Clay Mask onto Amazon as a result of the online shopping hub’s face mask procedures. Nügg Beauty, a skincare mask specialist, had its products jettisoned by Amazon for a day. Once it received notice from Amazon that its products were excised, Nügg parent company New World Natural Brands promptly changed terminology on Amazon across its portfolio of brands, which includes Baebody Beauty, 18.21 Man Made and Suki as well as Nügg, to prevent future product expulsions.

Dan Sudman, CEO and co-founder of Carbon Beauty, a natural beauty and wellness company managing Amazon listings for several brands, including Herbivore, Ilia and Innersense, says Amazon has been “indiscriminately” pulling down skincare face masks and additional beauty products that mention antibacterial, antimicrobial and sanitizing properties in their product descriptions. He elaborates, “Sellers have the opportunity to appeal these removals. However, the products then undergo a lengthy review process, remaining inactive during the review and compromising sales across all of those products in the meantime.”

“You have to be checking every day that all your items are active,” says Shannon Curtin, CEO of New World, mentioning that her company caught Nügg’s delistings before an outside firm handling the company’s Amazon presence. “No one is going to know their brands better than the brand founders, and you have to make sure you’re staying up to date, and you don’t miss anything on Seller or Vendor Central.” Seller and Vendor Central are the web interfaces used by brands to market their products on Amazon.

“You have to be checking every day that all your items are active.”

Amazon is restricting advertising against key words such as face masks and hand sanitizers associated with goods that have been in high demand since the onset of the coronavirus outbreak. Social media networks like Facebook have enacted similar restrictions. New World has changed its search term advertising to enable customer traffic to still be directed to its listings and not run afoul of Amazon’s rules. For example, while it might have previously advertised against the search term “facial skin mask,” “facial skin treatment” is the preferred nomenclature today. Curtin says, “Masking in general is what we do, but that’s not the type that’s needed most now, so we have to be creative about what is searchable and what is relevant now.”

Amazon’s skincare mask purges are particularly challenging for beauty brands because skincare masks are among a relatively small subset of beauty items performing well under the current tough circumstances. On Amazon, digital media and marketing agency Stella Rising has seen more than a 40% increase in search demand for sheet masks since the beginning of March. On Google, mask-related searches like Aztec clay mask, turmeric mask, mud mask and collagen mask have soared by 83%, according to consumer data science company Spate.

“This contributes to the greater category of self-care that has seen a spike in the past month,” says Rina Yashayeva, VP of marketplace strategy at digital media and marketing agency Stella Rising. “Since visiting the spa or getting a facial is no longer an option, consumers are doing it themselves in the comforts of their home.”