Dillard’s, the well-know department store chain, wasfounded in 1938 by William T. Dillard with only $8,000. Today, it ranks among the nation’s largest fashion retailers with annual sales exceeding more than $6 billion dollars. Recently, Dillard’s built on their store-in-store beauty concept, Edge Beauty, with a private label cosmetic line under the same name. Edge Beauty Collection looks to complement the 50 or so national and indie beauty brands sold within Edge Beauty.

“Private label products have always proven highly successful for us,” said Sheryl Porter, lead educator for Edge Beauty. “The company has a very strong heritage with our private label. It accounts for approximately 21 percent of our store’s total business.”

Taking a nod from Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, each of whom have opened branded store-in-stores within their makeup departments, Dillard’s five years ago opened Edge Beauty, which sells brands such as Nars, Smashbox, Glamglow, Super Goop, Deborah Lippmann, Bare Minerals, among others.

Presently, Dillard’s operates 290-plus stores; Edge Beauty is found in 124 of them. Though each store-in-store offers an assortment of different beauty brands, the Edge Collection is the only constant found in all of them.

“We knew Sephora did it well, and Ulta did it more for promotional branding. We wanted to add some consistency to the Edge stores and private label is in our blood,” said Dana Davis, head buyer for Edge. “We were very careful not to take away from what we already were offering. We picked colors that did well throughout our departments but were not found within our Edge shops.”

Dana added that the goals were to offer fun, pops of color and classic looks, while also introducing the consumer to a luxury brand at an affordable price.

The line is a tight, highly-edited collection of approximately 35 sku’s, which took 18 months from concept to completion. It offers as few as two and as many as eight shades per category within bronzers, blushes and lips such as lipgloss, lip liners, lipsticks, mascara and eyeliners. Prices range from $16 to $22.

Another first for the company was hiring a public relations firm outside of the Dillard’s corporation. “That was very new for us. But we quickly understood that when you launch a makeup brand, you need outside exposure because the market is so big,” said Dana.

The company is also relying heavily on social media to spread the word.

“Instagram is where consumers are getting educated. So we decided to hit bloggers all over the country in the hopes of getting instant feedback and for people to write about it as quickly as possible,” she said. More than 300 bloggers were sent packages containing most of the line. Massive training within the Edge stores has also taken place.

“As our customer has evolved, so have her beauty wants and needs. And with the portfolio of new brands coming out it’s easy to see why that is,” Sheryl said. “She’s no longer loyal to just one brand but rather wants to buy the best of the best regardless of which brand is offering it. We saw a rich opportunity to enhance our current assortment and we wanted to give the quality she loves while offering her something exclusive to Dillard’s.”

Of course they were concerned about being sensitive to their existing brands.

“Even though we are extremely established, we were worried about cannibalizing,” said Sheryl. “But we felt there was an opportunity to fill a void with our own label to give the consumer some additional choices. Lipsticks and liquid eyeliners have proven to do very well for us. Foundation is tricky, whereas red lipstick looks great on all skin types,” said Sheryl. “Foundation is very specific in terms of coverage, color and formula. We have a lot of legacy brands like Estée Lauder, Clinique and Dior, for example, that do foundation very well. That’s a cornerstone already. We wanted to create an enhancement not competition.”