As ever, the minute I publish a BBN, something exciting happens and last month was no different as Unilever announced that they are selling both REN (one of my favourite brands ever, far too expensive though) and Kate Somerville. Actually, this was announced at the end of August which means I have missed two months of BBN and I’ve no idea how that happened. After Vasiliki Petrou, CEO of Unilever Prestige Beauty left to start up her own investment group, there was a brief gap at the helm before Mary Carmen Gasco-Buisson, formerly chief marketing officer at Pandora, was announced as the new CEO. She has a lot to do – two major sales as well as carving new paths for existing brands such as Hourglass.
Meanwhile, Jane Lauder, Chief Digital Officer and Executive Vice President of Enterprise Marketing, has announced her departure from Estee Lauder. Shares in ELC have fallen 40% this year, reflecting poor performance and economic conditions. Having been in the game for a couple of decades, I can tell you that going back even just a few years that Estee Lauder was a mark of excellence – their PR departments were second to none, their training was thorough and their brands were reliably both glamorous and effective. In my view, their downfall has been social media where they tried to take part in a way that was not reflective of their brands nor their customers. Like many beauty brands, a big focus on securing a future clientele saw them deserting the most loyal customers any brand could hope for. It’s backfired – they hesitated too long and did it at a time when they could not lead the charge (L’Oreal firmly led) which meant they were always chasing. They neglected the fact that there are now more beauty brands than anyone can name and that younger generations are not going anywhere near Estee Lauder skin care unless they’ve seen it, like many of us have, in situ – on their mother’s dressing tables. Their existing customers were their best marketeers and they neglected them horribly. Jane Lauder will retain a board seat, but her departure leaves ELC with no family member overseeing daily ops – for the first time in 75 years. Stephane de La Faverie, current Executive Group President, takes the CEO role. He has got some very serious turning around to do.
Harrods has been under intense scrutiny over the past couple of months following the revelations that Al Fayed was absolutely the complete shit we suspected him of being. However, the tentacles of the abuse revelations travel far – Nigel Blow, a former Harrods exec who worked under Al Fayed, has had his offer to run Fenwick withdrawn. Mr Blow worked in senior roles at Harrods between 2002 to 2007 and denies having seen or even heard about any of the current allegations. He complains that he has been deemed guilty by association and that Fenwick is breaking their contract by withdrawing the role.
PZ Cussons, owners of Carex, Child’s Farm and Charles Worthington, to name a few, is to divest themselves of tanning brand, St. Tropez, established in 1996. PZ Cussons have owned St Tropez for 14 years, after purchasing it from the private equity company, LDC in 2010. Part of the problem for PZ Cussons is that their diverse portfolio and overseas operations, particularly in Nigeria, have struggled, leaving them short to expand into more lucrative markets such as the US. I think we will see more news from this company soon.
In April, Net-a-Porter cut its beauty brand offering from 200 brands to 70. Fast forward six months and it is turning its entire beauty department to an affiliate program which means that Net-A-Porter will hold no stock, but instead send customers to brand e-commerce channels from which they will take a cut of sales. The benefit to brands is high quality traffic but I’m not seeing it as a sustainable model because brands would always rather not be paying a cut. Remember that FarFetch closed its beauty section in 2023 and Matches went into administration in March. It’s a tough time to be a luxury e-tailer.
Want to know where the unused press samples may soon be ending up? Hardly Ever Worn It. It’s old news that samples and, cough, ‘gifts’ are sold on but it’s more usual to find them on eBay or Vinted going for something of a song. Not on HEWI – the unused products there range from Creed fragrance to Augustinus Bader skin care for proper money. I can see they’re going top end, brand wise, but as an example at the time of writing, Bvlgari Le Gemme Tygar Eau de Parfum, 100ml, is offered for £175, with the retail price being £350.
M&S is scheduled to open stand alone fashion & beauty stores which are more boutique in nature and where you won’t be able to get a prawn sandwich no matter how hungry you are, nor a single piece of school uniform. Careful positioning of these boutique stores is key so you’ll likely find them in city shopping centres next to Zara or Jigsaw rather than Boots. First up is Battersea Power Station. My observation is that beauty for M&S does well outside of London but tumbleweed blows through the beauty sections of both Oxford Street shops. I love the idea of these smaller, more edited stores although I hope that their somewhat mundane beauty brand offerings will step up to the challenge. Interestingly, John Lewis is also having a beauty-first revamp in some of their stores.
Nails INC has been sold to private equity firm Pacific World Corporation. This feels like a big surprise because I’ve never heard of any of the PWC brands (although am very intrigued by their curly hair care brand called Dippity Doo). State-side though, they have massive distribution via Target, Walmart, Boots and CVS and known expertise in brand scaling.
Who is next on the Hollywood skin care wagon? John Legend is! He has just launched Loved01, a skin care line, in collaboration with Dr Naana Boayake. He’s taken the Victoria Beckham route of launching products with experts in their field rather than white-labelling any old nonsense and using his name to sell it. The range is aimed at melanin rich skin tones and it’s priced extremely reasonably with $12 for a face and body moisturiser and $13 for a hand wash. It’s currently US only but Loved01 has a link up with QVC so hopefully we will see this here soon.
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