Revlon up for sale?, Australia's top shopping centres, Crabtree & Evelyn on track for China boom, and the top beauty advertisers in print in 2015.
Revlon up for sale?
It's been 30 years since Ron Perelman became the majority owner of Revlon. The billionaire attempted to take the company private in 2009 but was hit with a lawsuit from other investors. MacAndrews & Forbes, Perelman's investment company which owns 78 per cent of Revlon, has announced in a filing that it will seek strategic alternatives for the colour cosmetics icon.
Revlon exited the Chinese market two years ago and has made a series of acquisitions, including the Colomer Group and Creative Nail Design, in a bid to find new avenues of growth. But the company has continued to post profit declines and its share price has plummeted 24 per cent over the past year. A detailed plan for a sell-off was not included in the filing and analysts believe Perelman is sounding out the market for interested parties.
Australia's top shopping centres
Over 90 per cent of American consumers chose bricks over clicks for their holiday season shopping reports the International Council of Shopping Centers(ICSC). According to Tom McGee, CEO and President of ICSC: "The American consumer has sent a clear message that the physical store remains the centre of the shopping experience". Australians have the same attitude says Roy Morgan Research. In the financial year to June 2015, 85 per cent of the population over the age of 14 - 16.5 million - visited one or more shopping centres in an average four week period.
The most popular centre in the country is Chadstone in Melbourne with 396,000 visitors per month. Westfield Pararramatta in Sydney comes in second with 385,000 visitors. Two more Melbourne centres make the top five - Melbourne Central (307,000) and Westfield Doncaster (290,000). Westfield Chermside in Brisbane ranks fourth in the nation and first in Queensland with 303,000 visitors per month.
Melbourne is the leading retail city boasting eight out of the top 20 shopping centres nationwide. Highpoint, Northland, Bourke Street Mall, Fountain Gate and Knox City all attract more than 250,000 shoppers per month. Close to 50 per cent of Australians are willing to go out of their way for a bargain reports Roy Morgan Research. The top three shopping centres for discount hunters are all in Queensland - Australia Fair on the Gold Coast and Brisbane's Queen Street Mall and Myer Centre.
Michele Levine, CEO of Roy Morgan Research, says that although many shopping centres have a similar retail mix, each location caters to a different set of customers. Only 22 per cent of Australian consumers say they are influenced by premium brands but 43 percent of shoppers at Westfield Bondi Junction confess to a weakness for luxury names. Selling fashions? Shoppers at Melbourne Central have the biggest addiction to browsing clothing racks (65 per cent), followed by Emporium Melbourne (62 per cent) and Westfield Parramatta (60 per cent).
Pinpointing the right spot to set up shop has become an exact science notes Levine. "Using our Helix Personas Segmentation tool, we can drill down to a really specific type of customer. For instance, David Jones and Myer each have stores in both Westfield Warringah Mall and Castle Towers in Sydney's north. But at Warringah, over one in five shoppers are Blue Chip ( more likely to shop at David Jones), while shoppers at Castle Hill are disproportionately identified as Status Matters (almost four times more likely to buy from Myer)".
Crabtree & Evelyn on track for China boom
In spite of its very English image, Crabtree & Evelyn started as an American brand in the early 1970s. In December, the company was bought by Hong Kong-listed investment company, Nan Hai, for US$175 million. The largest acquisition of an international cosmetic company involving a Chinese buyer.
The deal is based on a partnership with Orange Blossom, a Cayman Islands-based investment firm, and will be finalised in June. Nan Hai are best known in China as the owner of the Dadi Cinema Group, which currently operates 270 movie theatres with 10 million members. The company plans to open 300 more cinemas over the next three years. The acquisition not only allows Nan Hai to expand beyond its core business but also to make a major play in China's soaring cosmetic market - now second only to the US. The company plans to create a synergy between both businesses by opening Crabtree & Evelyn sales spots in all of its cinemas.
Crabtree & Evelyn has 30 retail locations in Hong Kong but has never been sold in mainland China. Yu Xin, the CEO of the Dadi Cinema Group, has already received invitations from several shopping malls and plans to open at least 100 Crabtree & Evelyn stores over the next two to three years. China is a huge, blank market for Crabtree & Evelyn, adds Yu, and the brand's rapid expansion in the country will boost global sales, which experienced a decline of 14.3 per cent in the financial year ended March 2015.
Top beauty advertisers in print in 2015
It's tough to keep track of all the new beauty launches. But in 2015, 4548 new products hit the shelves in Australia says My Market Insight. A non-stop schedule that produced 919 pages of beauty editorial in print and and accounted for 34 per cent of all products mentioned reports the analyst.
L'Oréal Paris ranked number one in the mass market for new product mentions in print and was the most mentioned prestige brand last year. But Revlon was a clear winner in the top 10 for the highest ad spend in print by rate card. ranked second, followed by , L'Oréal Paris, Rimmel London, Sally Hansen, , , and .
Mass brands dominated the rest of the top 20. ranked 11th, followed by , , , , OPI, , Maybelline New York, Christian Dior and Chanel.
The five leading new products with the biggest ad spend in print by rate card during 2015 were: Perfectly (Un)done range with an outlay of $903,768 reports My Market Insight. Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Red Carpet Collection ranked second with $723,638, followed by Estee Lauder across multiple anti-ageing products at $521,149, Simple Kind To Skin Cleaning Micellar Water at $509,456 and Clinique Perfecting Foundation + Concealer at $505,123.
Snippets from the wires
- Max Factor has launched a quartet of red lipsticks inspired by the late, great Marilyn Monroe. Named Marilyn Ruby Red, Marilyn Sunset Red, Marilyn Berry and Marilyn Cabernet, there's a red to suit every woman says Pat McGrath, Max Factor Global Creative Director.
- South Korean cosmetics brand Tonymoly launched in Sephora stores in the US last year. From April, the 10 year old range will debut in 825 Sephora stores across 15 European countries.
- Michelle Feeney, former PZ Cussons Beauty CEO, was responsible for setting up the division's major operations in London, New York and Melbourne. The cosmetics industry veteran, a longtime Estée Lauder executive, has been appointed to the Executive Advisory Board of private equity firm Palatine. Analysts expect a major cosmetics brand to join Palatine's portfolio of restaurants, bars and healthcare companies.
- Walgreens Boots Alliance, the US/European drugstore giant, whose retail brands include Walgreens, Duane Reade, Boots and Alliance Healthcare, reported net sales in Q1 2016 of US$29 billion - an upsurge of 48.5 per cent. The American operations accounted for the lion's share of sales at US$20.4 billion.
- The global argan oil market is on track to reach US$1.79 billion by 2020 reports Grand View Research. The cosmetics/haircare industries account for 40 per cent of global production and are expected to continue as the main drivers of growth.
