The decline of the beauty box is less about the category’s core proposition, but rather the march of an industry evolving at a lightning-fast pace.
Yet, for a time, their inherent thrill and affordability led to an unprecedented boom for mystery boxes during the mid-2010s.
The segment doubled in value from £43m in 2017 to £79m in 2020, according to logistics company Whistl, with 11% of the UK population being members of a beauty subscription box that year.
But the once-dominant category has lost its lustre, with more dedicated beauty box businesses facing financial challenges or simply closing their doors such as Kinder Beauty and Bellabox.
It is also competing in a far more thickly saturated subscription box market, with the rise of the miniature format and beauty advent calendars separately stealing consumer attention.
Lookfantastic, however, is signalling that this category might still have life in it yet, as it gears up for a ten-year celebration of its beauty box service in August.
German supermarket Lidl also launched its own £2 beauty box in May, which reportedly sold out in seconds, and digital department store Freemans entered the category last year.
Can beauty boxes carve out a new niche in a vastly different beauty landscape?
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