Bath & Body Works starts selling on Amazon as brands embrace logistics

Bath & Body Works Champagne Toast bodywash, with no minimum shipping threshold, is now just a click away for Amazon Prime members.

The mall-favorite brand is making some of its best-selling fragrances, bodywashes, hand soaps and candles available for Amazon’s U.S. shoppers. The selection is also eligible for Prime shipping.

Amazon is the No. 1 online destination for U.S. beauty shoppers, accounting for 47% of the online beauty and personal care market in the U.S. in 2024, according to Euromonitor. Sephora is second with 9% share. Euromonitor estimates 39% of all beauty and personal care sales take place online.

“Launching our first authorized brand storefront on Amazon allows us to put ourselves directly in the path of the consumer,” Bath & Body Works CEO Daniel Heaf told CNBC. “It’s about meeting them where they already shop.”

The Amazon launch marks the latest effort by Columbus, Ohio-based Bath & Body Works to expand its access points for customers. Last year, it began selling its products in college campus stores — with a footprint of now more than 1,000 locations — in the company’s first points of sale outside its roughly 2,600 owned and franchised stores and its own website.

Heaf joined Bath & Body Works in May after his role as Nike’s chief transformation and strategy officer was eliminated by CEO Elliott Hill.

Heaf recently laid out his “plan to return [Bath & Body Works] to profitable, sustainable growth.” He calls it a “consumer-first formula” with four pillars: creating disruptive and innovative products; reigniting the brand; winning in the marketplace; and operating with speed and efficiency.

The Amazon partnership, Heaf said, “is the first of many milestones that we’ll be delivering this fiscal year against that strategy.”

Before the official storefront launch, Bath & Body Works products were sold on Amazon through third-party resellers.

Now, Heaf says, the company is attempting to reclaim the brand story on Amazon — and those marketplace sales.

While Amazon has many first-party relationships with brands from Nike to Calvin Klein that use wholesale partnerships as part of their business models, there are few examples of retailers selling on the site that design, manufacture and sell their products entirely on their own.

For those so-called vertically integrated brands, like Bath & Body Works, Amazon is increasingly filling the role of skilled logistics partner rather than retailer. 

Gap, J.Crew and Everlane are similarly vertically integrated and have small selections of branded products for sale on Amazon.

Gap began selling what it calls “core basics for the whole family” in 2022 through a wholesale relationship, where Amazon owns and sells the products, which are Prime eligible. Gap has said its goal is to reach new or lapsed customers as well as provide existing shoppers the convenience for “core essentials.”

Under Bath & Body Works’…