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Interview Sisley president Philippe d’Ornano The service factor In a frank interview, French brand Sisley president Philippe d’Ornano tells BW Confdential what retailers should do to improve their business and boost beauty sales by Oonagh Phillips isley president Philippe d’Ornano has a strong message for How do you see make-up and fragrance developing? Sretailers: give consumers better and impartial advice, stop Logically, make-up and fragrance will take a bigger share of our hard selling the sales operation of the week and put more focus sales. But skincare continues to grow strongly. Each of our three on high-end skincare. He believes that a failure to do so has categories has grown by more than 50% in the past fve years. seen consumers turn away from the perfumery channel and We see a lot of potential in high-end treatment make-up and even some categories of beauty products, and is holding back our recent launches are very successful—Phyto Lip Twist and the development of the high-end skincare segment. Phyto Eye Twist are market best-sellers. Indeed, while the industry complains of a declining skincare As for fragrance, Sisley’s perfumes have a high-end positioning, market, d’Ornano points out that there is much potential to which is different from the mainstream. We build them through widen the consumer base and grow the category even in a mix of advertising and investment in the stores and have the most mature markets, providing retailers do their job a growing and loyal clientele. For example, we launched Eau properly and brands take a more reasoned approach to their du Soir in 1990 and it is still in the top 35 in France. Our new launch strategies. fragrance Soir d’Orient is off to a promising start. While admitting that Sisley has been held back by these problems on the retail front, d’Ornano says that the brand is still Have you been impacted by the slowdown in skincare? managing to see strong growth, even in its domestic market of In a category that is seeing sales decline, Sisley is reporting France where skincare sales are up by 7% so far this year. He high growth. In France, our skincare retail sales reported by forecasts that future growth will be driven by the development NPD are growing by 7% this year at the end of August, of fragrance and especially make-up, which represents 18% of and we are seeing double-digit growth in skincare in many sales, as well as by geographic expansion and what he sees as markets. The fact that selective skincare is not doing well, the key strategy of Sisley—attention to product quality and a but that a high-end brand like Sisley is growing, shows that focus on the long term. there is an underdeveloped potential for high-end skincare in selective distribution. How big do you see the brand becoming in the next fve years? Retailers say the problem with skincare is that there is We have never reasoned in terms of fve-year growth plans, but not enough innovation and prices are too high. in terms of product development and brand building. We think Prices are always too high if customers are not satisfed with about research on new products and how we can better work the product, but if you have a good product the customer can with our retail partners and if we do this well growth will follow. understand a higher price; we’ve built our success on that. We are not primarily fnance people, but creators, manufacturers We are very careful about each launch and want our line to and merchants. Success at the high end is determined by be a reasonable size. In the past 10 years, there has been an innovation and quality, together with good in-store advice. explosion of launches—launches have become a gimmick for When analyzing Sisley’s possibilities for development, there is brands and a way of doing short-term sales. We try to have a frst a natural geographical growth, as the brand is not developed in comprehensive way of launching and each product is well thought all countries in the same way; and even in the countries where we out. We want each product to be considered as a best-seller in its are well established we think we can develop further. The second category and we want it to be well understood both by the customer area is that our three categories—skincare, make-up and fragrance and the BA. We may launch fewer new products, but they have been are not at the same level of development, although all three are successful, and not only in the frst year. Successful products such growing very fast. as Sisleÿa lotion and L’Huile Précieuse à la Rose Noire contribute to 32 November-December 2015 - N°24 - BW Confidential