Cross-border beauty of luxury brands is not as simple as imagined.

Text | Cosmetics News Zou Xinchen

Gucci (Gucci), Prada (Prada), Hermes (Hermes), Burberry (Burberry) … These luxury brands are well-known in the fashion world. In recent years, they have stepped into the beauty industry "cross-border" one after another, which was once regarded as a "dimensionality reduction blow" by KOL and fans. Recently, however, the slow growth of Gucci Beauty seems to be a microcosm of the dilemma of these luxury fashion brands in the beauty market: it is not as easy as imagined that "blue blood" aristocratic luxury brands make beauty across borders.

The rotation of 01 brand creative directors is like a cursory tour, and the beauty product line is overwhelmed.

"Everyone wants to know what’s next for Gucci Beauty." Joan Kennedy, a columnist of Business of Fashion, said in her report.

In 2019, Coty Group relaunched this beauty brand. At that time, the creative director of Gucci was Alessandro Michele, who brought his minimalist and emotional style into all aspects of the brand, and the beauty business was also affected by it. Gucci Beauty’s product packaging is characterized by bright flowers and retro style, and it is featured by punk musicians such as Dani Miller. It is eccentric and exaggerated, which is very in line with Michelle’s aesthetics. "But in terms of product content, it is no different from other brands of eye shadow discs and lipsticks." Joan said.

At first, Michelle’s novel concept caused a shock in the fashion and beauty industries, and the sales of Gucci Beauty products soared. However, with the novelty brought by Michelle’s aesthetics gradually disappearing, consumers’ "aesthetic fatigue" on Gucci has become more and more obvious. During 2020-2021, Gucci’s sales continued to decline. In November 2022, Michelle left her job, and before the new creative director took office, the men’s show in January designed by the former was greatly reduced in scale, and the same reduction also appeared in beauty. Gucci Beauty declined to comment on it.

The dilemma of Gucci Beauty has sparked a heated discussion in the industry about how luxury fashion brands should carry out their beauty business. Historically, it has always been a challenge to combine fashion and beauty makeup, which run on different time axes and serve different customers. For the beauty product line of fashion brands, it may be an effective strategy to "completely accept" the aesthetics of creative directors, but relying too much on the aesthetics of creative directors will also bring risks, especially after luxury brands have developed the habit of rapidly rotating creative directors.

In recent years, the term of the creative director of luxury brands has become shorter and shorter. For example, Ann Demeulemeester, Bottega Veneta and Burberry all "sent away" their former creative directors in less than five years. "If the beauty business is consistent with the overall aesthetic style of the brand, replacing the creative director will inevitably lead to the redesign of the packaging of beauty products, which requires high operation of the operation department and will affect the overall profitability." Tony Wang, founder of brand strategy consulting firm Office of Applied Strategy, said in an interview with BOF.

"For example, in Gucci, it seemed reasonable at that time to let Michelle have more say in beauty, but with the change of brand creative director, Gucci Beauty also followed the overall style of’ Ben Jia’ and chose to take traditional aesthetics as the design center, which caused its brand image to be separated from the previous Michelle period." Tony Wang said, "This image transition is not only slow, but also very expensive."

"Because clothing is seasonal, the cost of redesigning fashion is lower, and consumers will soon forget the style of last season. But in terms of beauty, once you produce a large amount of inventory, it is not easy to change the product packaging. " Tony Wang added.

02 luxury brands are in trouble, beauty and fashion style "fight"

Traditionally, luxury fashion brands sell their beauty products to giants such as L ‘Oreal, Estee Lauder and Coty, who are responsible for the specific development, marketing and distribution of products under the guidance of brand creative directors.

"On the bright side, these authorized beauty product lines can enhance the brand image in disguise. Smaller fashion brands like Ba Erman or Magira can expand their beauty product lines without investing their own funds through authorized cooperation with L ‘Oré al Group. " Mario Ortelli, managing partner of Ortelli & Co., a luxury goods acquisition company, said. "However, in a negative sense, this kind of" two-management "behavior will also split luxury brands, resulting in a lack of cohesion in the brand as a whole, thus weakening the brand image."

"Of course, the licensee naturally wants to renew the contract with the brand, but their top priority is to make as much money as possible during the contract period, rather than maintaining the overall tonality and brand image of luxury brands." Ortelli said, "But for luxury brands, the latter is the most important."

When the beauty products authorized by large groups deviate from the style of the creative director of luxury brands, the results will also confuse consumers. For example, in 2018, Coty Group launched a publicity campaign for Burberry’s "She" perfume, adopting the style of Christopher Bailey, the former creative director of Burberry. However, not long after, Riccardo Tisci, the brand’s new creative director, released the brand concept centered on street clothes and adopted a more modern new logo and letter pattern, and the publicity campaign was dropped.

Similarly, Valentino Beauty, which was launched in 2021, uses big red as the product packaging. Although this hue will remind consumers of the brand image of Valentino in the last century, it has nothing to do with the electro-optical pink recently promoted by Pierpaolo Piccioli, the brand creative director.

"This’ deviation’ means that those’ new’ consumers who are attracted by beauty products lack a clear understanding of the style of luxury brands themselves." Ariel Ohana, managing partner of investment bank Ohana & Co., said, "This chronic’ brand image erosion’ is hard to find, especially if luxury brands cooperate with licensees for a long time."

"The story and overall image created by a brand are the most important assets of luxury brands." Tony Wang also agreed with Ohana that "the brand image found by luxury consumers in the beauty products they buy should be consistent with the brand as a whole, otherwise, it will damage the brand’s long-standing historical reputation."

Ohana added: "If this will damage the overall image and reputation of the brand, even if the brand has performance growth in the next few decades, one day, the brand will pay for it."

Dior: keep a balance between beauty and fashion.

Luxury brands such as Chanel and Dior choose to firmly control the beauty products business in their own hands. This internal operation mode gives brands more control-not to mention higher profit margins. Audrey Depraeter-Montacel, managing director and head of beauty business of Accenture, said, "Many mysteries surrounding the production of beauty products have been solved, and it is easier to launch beauty products now than it was ten years ago. However, this still requires the brand to take out a lot of time and money; In addition to investing in products, marketing and distribution capabilities, operating the beauty business internally requires luxury brands to change their way of thinking and require more interaction between R&D departments and commercial operations departments. "

"A luxury brand like Dior, which has more budget and higher popularity, has stronger independence in its beauty business." Audrey added, "The perfume of this brand has its own uniqueness, but it has little to do with the fashion of the brand. For example, Sauvage perfume endorsed by Johnny depp in 2015 can’t reflect the brand creative director Kim Jones’ understanding of the brand’s men’s wear style. If you ask anyone on the street, they may not know that Sauvage is Dior’s perfume, but it is still the most popular perfume in Dior’s history and a huge driving force for brand performance. "

But even if it is independent like Dior, it still dares not completely separate the brand image from the beauty business. Today, its new design logo is appearing in its cosmetics and perfume products, and the design of its creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri is also appearing in some advertisements of beauty products, such as Grisdiol perfume.

"I think it is necessary to try. Beauty cosmetics can be used as a channel to understand the response of luxury brands to fashion elements, or to attract new audiences, such as Generation Z consumers." Thomas Zeldari, a professor of luxury marketing at new york University, said. "With the increasingly fierce competition in the beauty market, luxury brands now have to compete not only with savvy rising stars, but also with each other. How to strike a balance between fashion style and beauty products is a problem that all major luxury brands need to consider in the future. "