The purpose of beauty sample boxes isn’t just to throw a bunch of small items in a box and collect subscription fees. It’s to promote brands and specific products among customers who are interested in fancy beauty products. Yet recent market research shows that subscribers to BirchBox go on to buy more products overall from companies that aren’t BirchBox.

Birchbox makes a good example in this case because they are one beauty box company that strongly encourages customers to return to their site and buy full-size versions of the products directly, offering rewards and incentives to do so. Customers do: data from market researcher Slice Data shows that Birchbox subscribers spend 38% more on the company’s site than non-subscribers who also shop there.

Somewhat predictably, though, Birchbox customers also go on to spend more money at other beauty retailers, which include stores like Ulta and Sephora that are likely to carry the high-end beauty products that the sample boxes distribute. Specifically, their research shows that Birchbox subscribers spend 5% more at Sephora than shoppers who don’t subscribe, and 6% more at Ulta.

“You have to believe that when you’re growing the market, everybody benefits from it,” Birchbox CEO Katia Beauchamp told Bloomberg News. Yet Beauchamp says that the company would prefer that customers came directly to Birchbox when they make more purchases, as nice as it is to benefit the industry as a whole.

Beauty Startup Birchbox Is Boosting the Sales of Competitors [Bloomberg]

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