Tags
Beauty, Clinique, Cosmetics, Estee Lauder, Lab Series, skin care
Cosmetics giant Estee Lauder refocuses its marketing efforts on the revenue potential of men’s skin care products by developing a new stand-alone men’s skincare segment which initially includes Lab Series and Clinique for Men. The article below reports on ELC’s latest marketing move.
Image Source: goguidemagazine.co.uk
The London Collections: Men may be well underway in Britain, kicking off the autumn/winter men’s wear circuit, but it turns out that fashion is not the only style sector increasingly focused on the revenue potential of the hairier sex. Estée Lauder, the American beauty behemoth that owns the likes of Clinique, Bobbi Brown and La Mer, has just created a new stand-alone men’s skin care group. It’s the first time the company has treated the segment as its own category.
At the moment, the new segment consists of just Lab Series and Clinique for Men, according to Lynne Greene, the Estée Lauder group’s president. Previously, Lab Series had been part of the Aramis and designer fragrance division, and Clinique for Men had been sold alongside Clinique for Women, “largely to women buying for men,” Ms. Greene said.
After a year of watching and testing the brands, Ms. Greene added when I called her to ask about the change, more acquisitions in the men’s space are a “possibility, and something we will look at.”
In other words: In 2015-16, the company may go on the buying path. Yowza.
Image Source: prairiegirlinthecity.com
“Men’s skin care is one of the fastest-growing categories in the world, and we thought it was time to put them together so we could talk about both the different venues and ways men are shopping,” Ms. Greene said.
Across all brands, men’s skin care has been growing globally at a rate of 9 percent a year, while the overall grooming category, including skin care, deodorant and shaving products other than appliances, has been growing only 4 percent a year, according to Ms. Greene. The trend began about four years ago, but it really caught Lauder’s notice 18 months ago.
Fashion has, of course, been obsessed with the possibilities of men’s wear for a while now (see, for example, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s expansion of Berluti under Antoine Arnault, Kering’s purchase of Brioni, and every brand’s stand-alone men’s wear stores), driven in part by the conviction that the segment is the key to the Asian markets, where men drive consumption.
And guess what? Ms. Greene says the consumer group driving the growth in men’s skin care is — yes — Asian men, as well as American men age 18 to 34.
“One brand can see up to 70 percent of their business coming from Asia,” Ms. Greene said. “In the U.S. and U.K., one in four men use some form of skin care, but in the U.S., it’s 60 percent of men between 18 and 34.” And that, apparently, is opportunity, especially in the context of Lauder’s Q3 2014 results, where the Asia-Pacific region reported that net sales increased by only 2 percent. Is men’s skin care the answer?
“I hate to say how big it can get, but we believe growth in our own men’s skin care business will outpace overall company growth,” Ms. Greene said.
Image Source: apetogentleman.com
I guess we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, Lauder is in a “test and learn” period, where it is exploring options including, as with fashion, free-standing men’s stores.
All of which is to say, if I were the owner of a niche indie men’s moisturizer and toner brand, I might feel a certain sense of … anticipation.
Estee Lauder Companies Executive Chairman William Lauder leads the beauty and skincare behemoth in its effort to conquer the prestige beauty industry with exciting retail concepts and outstanding innovation in different categories of skincare. Read about the latest ventures of ELC on this Facebook page.