Global information company The NPD Group is predicting a last minute pre-Christmas surge at beauty counters over the next eight days.
Sales of fragrance and women's gift sets were sluggish this November compared to 2012, but the latest figures for the first week of December show fragrance sales already up +7%. NPD is predicting the figure to grow over the last few shopping days and make up the previous shortfall in sales. This is likely to be due in part to frenzied last minute Christmas shopping becoming increasingly traditional behaviour, with prestige beauty counters providing an array of luxury gift options likely to delight on Christmas morning.
June Jensen, director for The NPD Group Beauty UK commented: “With nine more shopping days until Christmas, there is plenty of time for the last minute dash to the beauty counter for presents of prestige fragrance and gift sets. We predict that in these last few shopping days before December 25th, the shortfall in sales of fragrance and women’s beauty gift sets we’ve seen in November will be more than compensated.”
Despite the shortfall in fragrance and women's gift sets for November 2013, sales of prestige beauty products were up +2.5% compared to last year.