Shoppers Drug Mart’s beautyBOUTIQUE.ca has officially launched! Marketing Magazine says notes that Shoppers has “entered the online shopping arena,” but they’re only half right. Shoppers has had murale.ca for a number of years. Brands on the Beauty Boutique site include Stila, Benefit, Smashbox and Clinique, all available at most Beauty Boutique locations. In fact, the offerings are almost exactly the same as the as the digital Murale store. There are some differences – Clinique is in-store only at Murale, while one can purchase directly from beautyBOUTIQUE.ca. Of course, standard drugstore make-up like Maybelline and Covergirl are nowhere to be found.
Screenshot of the beautyBOUTIQUE landing page
The site is easy to navigate and one can register by connecting to Facebook or the old fashioned way, via email. Once registered, you can link your Optimum card if you have one. The number of points one can get by purchasing the product is noted. And like most shopping sites, one can rate and review products as well as share them on social media. I have to say that aesthetically speaking, I prefer BeautyBOUTIQUE over Murale. Murale just looks…dated. The images aren’t as big, for example.
Same product on beautyBOUIQUE.ca vs Murale. Notice the difference in image size and availability vs. unavailability online
With the beautyBOUTIQUE’s launch, I’m beginning to wonder if Murale will soon be closing. I understand that it had not been doing all that well and at least one store was either closed or rebranded as a regular Shoppers Drug Mart. There ARE slight differences – shipping cost, for example. Over at Murale, shipping is $8.50 for standard (which will take around seven business days), while it is $8 at Beauty Boutique.
So will I be using beautyboutique.ca? Sure. I’m already familiar with the brands and if I can’t find it in the two walkable stores near me (I actually can walk to FOUR, but one is under renos and another does not sell premium cosmetics), I can always go online. I WOULD like to see more brands, perhaps some that are online-exclusive. They’re not quite Sephora, of course, but you never know… Now if only they’d launch a beauty box program (now that Sephora is testing theirs out).
