The year in beauty was more than just latte girl makeup, influencer drama over L’Oréal’s Telescopic Lift mascara, and the ongoing struggle to secure Drunk Elephant bronzing drops.

While continually inflated prices impacted CPG categories like grocery, the beauty industry proved to be largely recession-proof this year. But consumer behavior still shifted, and so did beauty category dynamics, causing brands and retailers to adapt their strategies.

Mass quantities: Ulta reported strong results quarter after quarter this year, and even as prestige beauty sales slipped at the retailer (and players like Estée Lauder struggled) mass cosmetics continued to thrive as consumers embraced more affordable beauty options.

Among the highlights in the mass cosmetics category was E.l.f. (teens’ favorite beauty brand), which notched continual growth throughout the year thanks to an ad campaign with White Lotus star Jennifer Coolidge and its Halo Glow Liquid Filter and Beauty Wands, which is often described as a dupe for Charlotte Tilbury and other more expensive products (see: BeautyTok).

Keep reading here.—EC

Tesla advertises its cars as having a smooth ride, but following the prices for its vehicles has been anything but. Tesla has dropped prices multiple times in 2023, and then in April, it raised the prices of its two most expensive models.

Now, automotive industry economists and experts are left wondering: Is there a method behind Tesla’s up-and-down pricing changes?

Check out this investigation from CFO Brew to find out how the nontraditional car manufacturer’s sales and market share are expected to evolve.

We asked our reporters, who play so well with others, to choose a favorite story from 2023 by a Retail Brew colleague.

Lots of retailers have set goals to make their businesses more sustainable, but actually acting on those goals—and making the brands you sell comply—is a whole different story. Home Depot found a way to support its goal of moving away from fossil fuels by transitioning 85% of its outdoor lawn equipment to battery-operated by 2028, leveraging the power of the purchase order, Retail Brew’s Alex Vuocolo wrote.

If companies didn’t abide by these guidelines, they’d simply lose their spot on the shelf, and Alex highlighted how Home Depot’s strong influence in the home improvement category can inspire notable changes.

Keep reading here.—EC

If there’s anything we can learn from perusing our most-read stories of the year, it might be that Retail Brew readers are at least as interested in the future of retail as they are in its present (and, just for good measure, have a little nostalgia for its past). The tech transforming retail dominated this year’s list, but NRF’s 2023 Big Show, Green Wednesday, and the history of family pajamas were also apparently a hit. Here, ICYMI, are our top 15 most-read stories of 2023—they’re all well worth another read:

• Package Deal: In 1915, Coca-Cola had many imitators. Then it designed a patented bottle nobody could copy
• The key uses of AI in retail may surprise you
• Inside Dot Swoosh, Nike’s big bet on Web3
• Here are the CPG trends to expect in 2023
• Key themes we heard from global retail experts at NRF 2023
• How Green Wednesday became the Black Friday of cannabis
• Inside how retailers and credit card companies come up with bonus cash-back rewards offers
• Inside Starbucks Odyssey
• Amazon and Panera think conversational AI is the future of easy ordering
• The future of DTC brands
• How Stitch Fix uses AI to take personalization to the next level
• What’s a zillennial, and why should you care?
• A short, cozy history of family pajamas