Skin Care Center introduces new prestige brands to mass beauty retail.

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — CVS Pharmacy is piloting a new Skin Care Center format, launching in three CVS locations, featuring a wholly owned “shop-in-shop” beauty experience to bring enhanced access to skin health innovations.

The Skin Care Center format is now in select CVS Pharmacy locations in New York, N.Y. Woodland Hills and Walnut Creek, Calif.

“With the success of our BeautyIRL store formats, we’re making a move to provide new health-focused, innovative offerings with our Skin Care Center, an elevated in-store experience designed to help customers navigate personal skin health solutions,” said Andrea Harrison, VP of Merchandising, Beauty & Personal Care at CVS Health. “We have a proven ability to influence the industry and we’ll continue to expand that impact through customized experiences and purpose-led commitments that inspire trust, discovery, self-expression and confidence in our customers.”

Building on the success of CVS Pharmacy’s BeautyIRL experiential store format, Skin Care Center was developed to help consumers address individual skin needs with tools, education and products previously found only in prestige beauty retail — alongside clinically proven mass skincare brands. Highlights of the new format include:

• Efficacious prestige brands like Wander Beauty, Blume, and Volition Beauty — all new to CVS.
  • Blume and Volition Beauty are also entering mass beauty retail for the first time, through direct brand partnerships with CVS Pharmacy.
• Dermatologist tested and recommended mass market brands like Cerave, La Roche-Posay and Vichy.
• On-site skin diagnostic tools to help consumers assess their specific needs — and identify customized skin solutions — by leveraging advanced LED technology from SkinScope and ModiFace’s Derm Skin analyzer.
• Guidance from CVS Beauty Consultants — including licensed estheticians — all trained in diagnostics by L’Oreal experts.
• Innovative navigational elements, including signage “stories” that highlight:
  • Education around “beauty from the inside out” supplements and vitamins
  • Ingredient-based solutions for concerns like elasticity, acne scarring, puffiness and more
  • Dermatologist tested and recommended options
  • Effective products that address the unique concerns for melanin-rich skin
  • Step-by-step routine building: cleanse, prep, treat, moisturize, protect, mask and peel
  • Sun care to meet the diverse needs, lifestyles, skintones, and preferences of customers
• In-store testing experiences and custom sample offerings
• In-fixture purchasing via mobile POS

“We’re delighted to have been selected as one of the few brands pioneering CVS’ new Skin Care Center retail concept,” said Patricia Santos, Founder at Volition Beauty. “If there is one thing that we’ve learned about retail from the COVID pandemic, it’s that consumers want to shop prestige beauty in convenient retail locations where they already shop. The CVS Skin Care Center offers Volition Beauty adjacencies with dermatologist tested and recommended brands that serve to reinforce the clinical performance of our formulas.” This news builds on CVS Pharmacy’s extensive track record of leading the industry with health-driven moves in beauty:

• 2019: Completed the removal of chemicals of concern from nearly 600 CVS Store Brand beauty and personal care items. CVS has also removed oxybenzone and octinoxate from nearly 60 Store Brand sunscreen products under SPF 50.
• 2020: Launched a SkinSAFE partnership to help CVS consumers identify “Sensitive Friendly” beauty and personal care products, formulated without the most common allergy-causing ingredients.
• 2021: Announced 100% Beauty Mark compliancy in CVS beauty aisles, reaching its 2018 goal of full transparency for beauty imagery produced by and for CVS Pharmacy, driving a marked shift in industry standards for the mental health of its consumers.

Additionally, CVS Pharmacy has eliminated skin care items with an SPF below 15 from its shelves and, through its Tested to be Trusted program, requires third-party testing of all vitamins and supplements sold in CVS stores and on CVS.com. In 2018, CVS also introduced its BeautyIRL store concept, a highly interactive format designed to deliver a more inspiring, interactive in-store experience.

As part of its ongoing mission to deliver personalized and customized health and wellness solutions to its customers, CVS Pharmacy has also launched a pilot program with personalized digital brand experience technology company, Revieve, to offer skin diagnostic and make-up virtual try-on experiences. This pilot will launch in all 600 CVS Beauty Service Stores, which feature a fleet of highly-trained Beauty Sales Consultants whose knowledge and experience extends beyond trends into personal care, bridging the connection between beauty, health and wellness. The digital experience will replace the existing physical tester program as one of the many resources CVS provides its consumers to make confident, informed purchasing decisions.