Princess mania has cast a spell on consumers, once again.
An Estee Lauder (EL) makeup line, based on Disney's (DIS) new Cinderella film, reportedly sold out within hours of appearing on the MAC cosmetics website. A $17 dollar lipstick was later offered on eBay (EBAY) for $100 dollars, according to Bloomberg.
Disney’s Cinderella film, slated for release on March 13, is expected to produce $66 million in ticket sales during its opening weekend, according to BoxOffice.com. Frozen, Disney’s 2013 movie, is ranked as one of the highest grossing films of all time, after taking in over $1.2 billion globally.
Is Disney (DIS) on a roll with princess movies? Yahoo Finance’s Aaron Task thinks so.
“There’s a lot of eager anticipation about this live-action Cinderella film,” he says. “And by the way, Disney is going to put a Frozen related short ahead of Cinderella to get even the Frozen folk to come to the theater to see this Cinderella movie.”
Task notes that the demand for Cinderella merchandise points to larger economic trend.
“This story about the Estee Lauder cosmetics flying off the cyber shelves tells me that if we’re not in a bubble then we’re certainly in a robust economy, that someone’s going to pay $100 for a lipstick that costs $17,” he says. “It’s insanity to me, but again this is apparently what the market will bear.”
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In addition to makeup, Disney is collaborating with luxury shoemakers to create heels similar to Cinderella’s glass slippers. Yahoo Finance’s Jeff Macke points out that Disney has capitalized on princess retail partnerships for a long time.
“I’m not actually a historian, but I don’t believe the princess was invented this quarter,” he quips. “I think Disney has been selling a lot of princess related merchandise for the last 50 odd years.”
Macke adds that Disney’s (DIS) success with princess merchandise provides an incremental boost, but the company’s overall gains come from other areas.
“For Disney itself the Marvel purchase continues to be the absolute catalyst, that’s what drove them higher over the last four or five years. They paid $4 billion for that and it has already translated into multiples of that both at the box office and merchandise. So its good they’re selling makeup, I’m not sure what the split on it is.”
Macke concludes that the Cinderella makeup frenzy doesn’t necessarily imply a bubble.
“What it says to me that you’re buying this lipstick for $100 on eBay is that Estee Lauder should have made a lot more Cinderella lipstick.”
