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

Bath & Body Works Champagne Toast body wash, 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, body washes, 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 new agreement with Amazon, the brand will retain ownership of the inventory and control pricing, but will use Amazon’s fulfillment partners network for Prime eligibility. 

Everlane declined to comment on its Amazon partnership. J. Crew did not respond to request for comment.

Jewelry company Kendra Scott has an authorized storefront on Amazon after initially opposing the partnership — even though it had wholesale relationships with other retailers, including Macy’s and Nordstrom. But over time, the brand began to view Amazon as another opportunity to reach shoppers rather than a competitive threat, according to a person familiar with the company’s decision making, who spoke about internal matters on the condition of anonymity.

On its own website, Bath & Body Works is making it easier for shoppers to place their orders. The company lowered its free shipping threshold to $50 from $100 last month.

Still, Heaf admits, “We know that we will never compete with Amazon in terms of their Prime Network. No one is going to be offering next-day shipping. That’s just not what we’re in the business of. And so I think that by going on Amazon, we are also making our own site more competitive but recognizing that our job is not to build a fulfillment network that can operate at the speed of Amazon.”