Wunder2, one of the most popular beauty brands on Amazon, is reinforcing its relationship with the retailer by becoming the first cosmetics brand to debut an Amazon Alexa skill.
Earlier this week, the brand rolled out a makeup hack and product recommendation channel called “Beauty Tips,” on the voice platform. Updated daily with a new beauty tip, users can ask Alexa for the tip of the day to receive instruction on things like how to create flawless brows and how to do makeup for a holiday party. Best known for its Wunderbrow line of eyebrow products, Wunder2 supplies product recommendations throughout each feature, which can be shopped directly via voice. In the coming weeks, the skill will add videos that correspond to the tips that users can follow on their phone, computer or TV.
The Wunder2 team will be able to track the sales that come from Alexa, as well as — when the time comes — whether or not a user watched a video.
The London-based cosmetics company — which also sells eye, lip and face products — is entering an untapped space for the beauty industry that many predict will be the next driving trend in retail. This year, nearly one in five consumers (or 19 percent) made a purchase through a voice-controlled device, such as Amazon Alexa or Google Home, and another 33 percent plan to do so in 2018, according to research from the PR firm Walker Sands.
The brand’s only competitors in the space — if you can call them that — are Eucerin Skincare, which launched a skill offering skin care-centric tips, and Hearst’s My Beauty Chat, an editor-driven beauty tip channel.
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The move aligns with Wunder2’s roots: It’s owned by KF Beauty, a British brand development company driven by data and technology. Its founders, Michael Malinsky and Jon Davidman, previously worked in tech and digital advertising.
“We take a product and try to reach the market for it in a non-traditional way,” said Malinsky, who noted that the brand has always worked closely with Amazon, speaking with its beauty and marketing teams on a daily basis.
That’s paid off: Wunder2’s Wunderbrow is one of Amazon’s top 10 beauty products and was the No. 1 makeup item on Amazon for multiple weeks earlier this year. The brand also has its own dash button, the bluetooth-enabled button that customers rely on for speedy orders of items they frequently replenish from Amazon, which are usually more along the lines of toilet paper.
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Developing the skill was easy, said Malinsky. It took a little over two weeks of planning out makeup tips with the team, but only two days to go live once they signed up for the skill on Amazon. Now, it requires very little time out of his team’s schedule, he said, requiring only one planning meeting per week.
The brand has only done a soft launch so far, when it invited select customers via email and its Facebook page to test out the skill. It will wait for the video component to be set, hopefully before Christmas, before doing a full promotion, said Malinsky.
When asked why he thinks his products are so popular on Amazon, he said: “We’re not afraid to just try something new and get better as we go,” he said.
