In this 2020 round-up, we’re featuring the biggest stories of the year featuring beauty heavyweights such as Shiseido, L’Oréal, Amorepacific and more.
In this 2020 round-up, we’re featuring the biggest stories of the year featuring beauty heavyweights such as Shiseido, L’Oréal, Amorepacific and more.
In July, Japanese cosmetics giant Shiseido Company collaborated with Isetan Mitsukoshi Group to conduct live commerce sessions locally for the first time for its flagship brand, SHISEIDO.
Live streaming, a combination of streaming video and e-commerce, have become increasingly popular in the last few months, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 disruptions.
To combat the sales decline in the brick-and-mortar retail sector, Shiseido partnered with Isetan Mitsukoshi, one of Japan’s largest retail groups which owns both Isetan and Mitsukoshi department stores chains, to conduct livestreaming sales programmes.
The live steaming sessions were held on Isetan Mitsukoshi’s Meeco, a dedicated online beauty store launched the firm launched in February last year.
In February, Estée Lauder Companies’ CEO said the firm stood ready to invest to aid recovery from the impact of the China COVID-19 outbreak.
The company announced its impressive second quarter results on Feb 6, which reported that its net sales increased 16%, excluding the impact of currency translation.
This strong momentum continued in the first three weeks of January 2020, but the company has since experienced a significant decline due to the coronavirus outbreak.
In China, around two-thirds of the company’s department store doors were shuttered, and the remaining doors had their hours reduced.
French cosmetics company L’Oréal reported in April that its sales in China saw progressive signs of recovery since the country was hit by the COVID-19outbreak, potentially signalling that the cosmetics market was headed for a quick recovery post-pandemic.
L’Oréal was able to rebound quickly to achieve growth in China in March, leading to a positive first quarter for the company.
Chairman and CEO of L'Oréal Group, Jean-Paul Agon highlighted that the company’s performance in China was “remarkable”.
“China was able to close the quarter at plus 6% which is pretty amazing when you think about the difficulty that they had due to the pandemic.”
Consumer goods behemoth Unilever is hopeful on the future of its ‘refillery’ programme in the mass marketplace after launching a pilot in Singapore, but said there was still some ways to go in terms of education.
Early this year, the conglomerate piloted a beauty refillery scheme at its Singapore office, which encouraged employees to bring their own bottles to purchase product refills from the staff shop, thereby reducing the use of single-use plastic packaging for their daily needs.
Head of procurement packaging at Unilever, Marika Lindstrom, told CosmeticsDesign-Asia that Unilever Singapore was driven by its goal to be a plastic-free office as part of the company’s global movement to halve its use of virgin plastics by 2025.
While the firm had not announced plans to export the program to its various offices worldwide, Lindstrom said it was looking into the potential of an expansion.
In May, L’Occitane international was looking to boost development in the hand care category to keep up with demands generated by the COVID-19 outbreak.
The company’s fourth quarter net sales saw a decline of 0.7% at reported rates compare to the previous year while FY2020 net sales grew by 15.2% at reported rates.
According to the company, it managed to maintain good sales momentum in January before COVID-19 impacted the business in the subsequent months due to travel bans, lockdowns and shop closures mostly in China, Hong Kong and Japan.
Then, almost 75% of the company network of stores throughout Europe, the Americas, Japan and Australia remained closed. The company planned to undertake certain initiatives to manage the future impact of the crisis.
In May, Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido announced new strategies to tackle impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak if the economy does not recover by early 2021.
During its first-quarter results conference call, president and CEO, Masahiko Uotani stressed that it would take some time for the global economy to recover from COVID-19 even when a vaccine is discovered, or herd immunity is established.
As such, the company believed the future held two scenarios for the beauty industry – the first is a ‘neutral’ scenario where the economy and business will be able to recover by early 2021.
However, the firm also predicts another situation where a return to form will take up to three years.
South Korean cosmetics conglomerate Amorepacific said in August that it was actively working to extend its use of eco-packaging solutions across all its brands as part of its Less Plastics campaign.
The campaign is aligned with the United Nation’s (UN) 2030 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015.
“There is no doubt that plastic makes our lives easier but our reliance on single-use plastic is increasing and now it does more harm than good to us and our environment. Amorepacific felt responsible for plastic pollution and thus joined the global movement to reduce the consumption of single-use plastic,” said Amorepacific’s sustainability management team director Younggon Kim.
In February, L’Oréal Group CEO cautioned that the COVID-10 outbreak would cause a temporary slowdown but remained confident that the company would still be able to outperform the market in 2020.
The company reported 9.6% growth on a like-for-like basis in the fourth quarter of 2019.
The strong finish helped the company achieve its strongest sales performance in a decade, growing 10.9% from the previous year – up 8% on a like-for-like basis.
“We are starting this new year and this new decade stronger than ever,” said Jean-Paul Agon, Chairman and CEO of L’Oréal Group.
L’Oréal Group CEO cautioned that the coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) would cause a temporary slowdown but remained confident that the company would still be able to outperform the market in 2020.
The company recently reported 9.6% growth on a like-for-like basis in the fourth quarter of 2019.
The strong finish helped the company achieve its strongest sales performance in a decade, growing 10.9% from the previous year – up 8% on a like-for-like basis.
“We are starting this new year and this new decade stronger than ever,” said Jean-Paul Agon, Chairman and CEO of L’Oréal Group.
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed French cosmetics conglomerate L’Oréal Group to find innovative ways to reinforce the trust relationship between its brands and consumers, a leading executive told us in an exclusive interview in September.
Jochen Zaumseil, executive vice president of APAC, L’Oréal Group, stressed that a brand’s trustworthiness becomes vital during periods of upheaval as consumers are more likely to fall back on the steadfast and dependable.
“Very often, a crisis is also about a crisis of trust. Do you trust the authorities, the current economy – do you trust the brands? Brands with strong trust relationship are growing stronger than the others, it’s a natural thing,” Zaumseil told CosmeticsDesign-Asia.
Zaumseil had observed the steady growth among L’Oréal brands that were perceived to have high trustworthiness among beauty consumers.
