In short: Over the Fence reads your rival beauty and skincare stores every week: homepage offers, price and stock on the products you care about, and the rest of each store. New launches, kits, markdowns and sell-outs show up as changes. We track Google rankings, AI Overview citations and Instagram posts too.
Beauty moves on launches, kits and calendar sales. A serum drops, a gift-with-purchase appears in a banner, a set gets 20% off, or a rival’s Instagram posts the shade before the product page updates. We read your rivals’ stores and their public Instagram, and tell you what changed.
What rival beauty brands change
Launches and shade expansions often arrive in bursts. New product pages and “new” collection pages appear together. Seeing them the week they go live matters more than finding them a month later.
Kits and gifts with purchase often change the offer without changing the single-item price. Banners and kit pages are where we catch them.
Sale calendars matter. Searches for skincare sale and beauty sale spike around holidays. Rivals deepen cuts in steps. Knowing the step before Black Friday is useful.
Instagram often leads the store. Many beauty brands post the launch on Instagram first. We follow rival accounts so the post and the page change land in the same weekly picture.
What stood out
On October 20, 2026 we read five US DTC beauty stores from their public homepages and product data (Shopify products.json where it was available). Three of five are clean Shopify JSON reads (Glossier, Rare Beauty, Summer Fridays). The Ordinary is Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC), not Shopify — no usable products.json. Drunk Elephant blocks Shopify JSON with HTTP 410; we used homepage product prices only.
Kits and GWP are the beauty-specific signal: Glossier sets plus a Fragrance GWP collection; Rare Beauty Sets, GWPs and “Buy 2+ Holiday Sets, Get A Free Clutch”; Summer Fridays leads with Limited-Edition Sets; Drunk Elephant shows a valued kit on the homepage. The Ordinary only showed Gift Sets navigation in this pass — no priced kit sample.
Hero SKUs span $6 (The Ordinary Niacinamide) to $79 (Drunk Elephant C-Firma). Rare Beauty is makeup-first in the catalog we sampled — no serum or moisturizer for the hero row; Soft Pinch Liquid Blush $25 is the honest substitute. Free-shipping thresholds cluster $25–$50 across the set.
Honest thin spots: The Ordinary and Drunk Elephant have no compare-at catalog samples from JSON; Glossier’s October Surprise Sale collection lacked compare-at on the sampled sale SKUs (sets still show markdowns); Drunk Elephant has no newest PDP name on the homepage tiles we read.
Five beauty brands, side by side
Read from each brand’s own store on October 20, 2026 (HKT), in US dollars. A dash means it wasn’t on the pages we read.
| Glossier | The Ordinary | Rare Beauty | Summer Fridays | Drunk Elephant | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Beauty / skincare / makeup | Skincare (Deciem) | Makeup | Skincare + hybrid makeup | Skincare |
| Platform | Shopify | SFCC / Demandware (not Shopify) | Shopify | Shopify | JSON blocked (410); homepage prices only |
| Hero serum / moisturizer | Super Pure $34 (serum); Priming Moisturizer Rich $35 | Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1% $6.00; Natural Moisturizing Factors + HA $6.70 | Soft Pinch Liquid Blush $25 (makeup hero — no serum/moisturizer in catalog sample) | Jet Lag™ Deep Hydration Serum $44; Cloud Dew® Gel Cream Moisturizer $38 | C-Firma Fresh Vitamin-C Day Serum $79; Lala Retro™ Moisturizer $68 |
| Kit / GWP live? | Yes — All Sets 342; Fragrance GWP collection; e.g. The Skincare Icons | Gift Sets nav only — priced kit/GWP – | Yes — Sets 46; GWPs 16 ($0 sample cards); “Buy 2+ Holiday Sets, Get A Free Clutch.” | Yes — H1 “Limited-Edition Sets”; Beauty & Skincare Sets 24 | Yes — Water on Canvas kit $55 ($72 value); Kits & Bundles nav |
| Sale depth | October Surprise Sale 26 (no compare-at on sampled sale SKUs); set compare-ats ~10–38% | Anniversary / welcome 10% (and 15% welcome string) — no strike sample | Sets sample ~21–40% off compare-at (21/30) | Sets-minis ~17–38% off (20/24); Holiday Sale 11 | Kit value cut ~24%; signup 15% first order; sub promo 20%/20%/10% (Oct 19–27, 2026 EST) |
| Free shipping from | $40+ (US / en-us) | Over 25 USD | $50 order | U.S. orders $35+ | Orders $40+ |
| Newest PDP (if obvious) | Black Cherry Lip Line + Balm Duo (catalog newest, 2026-08-31) | – | BÉIS x Rare Beauty pouches / collab (new collection) | Lip Butter Balm Mocha Bonbon / Sugar Plum; Holiday Treat Duo | – |
| Homepage / promo highlight | October Surprise Sale collection; Fragrance GWP | “The Ordinary 10th Anniversary 10% Off” | “Buy 2+ Holiday Sets, Get A Free Clutch.” | H1 “Limited-Edition Sets”; “FREE SHIPPING ON U.S. ORDERS $35+” | “20% off, you say?”; “SIGN UP AND RECEIVE 15% OFF YOUR FIRST ORDER” |
| Example markdown item | The Skincare Icons $72 (was $90) | – | Bestselling Faves 4 Piece Set $39 (was $65) | Dewy Skin Set $44 (was $71) | Water on Canvas kit $55 ($72 value) |
The same reading done every week, for the products on your list and the rest of each store, is what we do for you.
See your competitors this week
Type your address. We find the sites that turn up next to yours in Google, in your country and language, and read them every week.
14 days free, then from $49 a month. Cancel any time.
Setting it up for a beauty brand
- Type your store’s address.
- Check the rivals we suggest. Add clean beauty, derm-inspired and mass-premium brands your customers compare.
- Fill your price list. Match rival hero SKUs (same concern, size and format).
- Turn on Instagram for rivals who post launches there.
- Read the Monday email.
What we don’t do
- We don't track sizes one by one. We see whether a product is in stock or sold out. We do not report which variants are left.
- We don't see sales. We can tell you a rival marked products down. We can't tell you how many they sold.
- We don't read behind logins. No member prices, no wholesale portals, nothing at checkout.
- We don't reprice your store. We report and you decide.
- We read once a week. A flash sale that starts and ends between two reads can slip past.
What it costs
Every plan starts with 14 days free, and you can cancel any time from your dashboard.