Drugstores to stop locking up black-beauty goods

Drugstore chains Walgreens and CVS Health say they will stop locking up beauty and hair care products aimed at black women and other women of color, joining Walmart in ending a practice at some stores that has drawn the ire of customers.

“We are currently ensuring multicultural hair care and beauty products are not stored behind locked cases at any of our stores,” Walgreens said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press late Thursday.

Walmart on Wednesday said it would ban the practice, which took place at a dozen of its 4,700 stores and became the focus of a federal discrimination lawsuit filed in 2018 that was dropped a year later.

Retailers are rethinking their merchandising strategies in the wake of protests across the nation against police brutality and racial inequality after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. While trying to undo discriminatory polices, they also realize they can’t afford to turn off multicultural customers who are big spenders of beauty products. CVS noted that it’s grown its textured hair and cosmetics area by 35% over the past year, and many of those brands are black-owned businesses.

Many stores have had a long-standing policy of locking up items that have high theft rates. But experts say that locking up items catering to black customers, particularly in black neighborhoods, is widespread and retailers need to abolish it. They also say that stores lock up more items in black neighborhoods compared to white neighborhoods.

“If you lock up products for black people and you aren’t doing that for products for white customers, that is discriminatory,” said Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail. “It is out of step with the times we are living now.”