Repositioning Heritage Beauty Brand - Bespoke Advantage
Loading

Global Product Strategy for a Beauty Brand - New Products, Pricing and Positioning

‘Janet is one of the best people I have ever worked with in my career. She fully understands the whole process of product development, supply chain and marketing. She is quick to understand the issues involved and resolve them with ease. Janet is a great leader and has in-depth experience of toiletries and international retailing. I would recommend her to any company or client.’

Category Manager and Buyer, Crabtree & Evelyn

Success Highlights
Led Global Product Development Team for Crabtree & Evelyn. Defined 3 – 5-year global product strategy, pricing, product propositions by brand and by category. Led redesign, repackaging, reformulations of signature hand creams, fine and home fragrances. Led design and development of Christmas Collection.

The Issue
Heritage beauty brand needed to be repositioned to appeal to a more contemporary market. Year-on-year sales down across global markets. With their head office and factory based in the US and offices based globally, better planning, process and communication was needed across global markets.

The Approach

Range review and product rationalisation
Reviewed the product performance across their product portfolio based on sales, stocks, margins, market specific requirements identifying non-performing lines. Managed markdowns and discontinuations across global markets.

Competitor and gap analysis
Conducted a competitor analysis focusing on their primary competitors to identify gaps and opportunities within their range. Based on market trends and conferring with the global formulator, identified opportunities to reformulate existing products and launch innovative new lines including fine and home fragrances, body care, soaps, hand creams, gifting, men’ grooming and beauty accessories.

New packaging based on consumer insights
Together with the creative director and creative agencies conducted market research to gain consumer insights based on design concepts found in the brand archives. Positive feedback confirmed this was the new design direction, a contemporary look with a nod to heritage that was uplifting in stores.

Pricing, product concepts, strategy and markets
Consulted with the MD’s for the brand across each market (US, Canada, Asia, Australia) to identify market specific products, prices and positioning. Implemented a gated new product development (NPD) process supported by global sales forecasts to measure financial viability of new product launches by market.

Cost transparencies
Introduced greater transparency of costs and a more stringent quality control processes. Greater cost transparencies improved margins and a more stringent quality control process reduced percentage of late deliveries and stock returns.

Communication and collaboration
Introduced new product development (NPD) process supported by weekly calls, video conferencing and working from multi-site offices in the UK and US to improve communication between global product development team, MD’s, sales, marketing and PR.

The Results
Janet led the new product development (NPD) team through rationalisation of the product portfolio, relaunch of best performing lines in new packaging and new formulations, introduction of innovative new products across categories and the implementation of an improved product development process with measures built in to manage stock, pricing and forecasting by market to drive an increase in gross margin.

If you would like to discuss how we can work with you to develop and grow your brand in the marketplace, GET IN TOUCH, we would love to hear from you.