Premium Beauty News - About the Supplier’s Day, it was the third edition. What were your goals?
The Body Shop - We brought together 55 collaborative and strategic suppliers from all categories (Trade and Indirect Sourcing), from three areas (Emea, Apac and Ame). We wanted to confirm their commitment to reinforce their cooperation with The Body Shop through three objectives:
– Inspire through the universe of the Brand, its 5 Core Values (Against animal testing; Supporting Community fair trade; Encouraging self-esteem, Defending human rights and Protecting our planet), its DNA and better integrate them into the company through our Award Ceremony, a question and answer session with The Body Shop and an opinion survey to measure the alignment of the strategy to the operational activity to identify the strong points and the ones requiring improvements.
– Look back at the strategy and performance of The Body Shop and outline goals for the coming year.
– Set up foundations for a sound development of the supplier relationship by also relying on good market practices thanks to the intervention of renown speakers in their fields: Gordon Crichton (Director of the MAI Institute of Purchasing Management - BEM Bordeaux Business School) and the Purchasing Director of the Lego Group, Michael McNulty.
| The Award Ceremony singled out the following suppliers: - Finished Products - best overall performance: S&J – Finished Products - best development, new product: Autumn Harp – Finished Products - best performance Supply Chain: LF Beauty – Finished Products - best improvements Supply Chain: S&J – Finished Products - best Quality performance - Soapworks – Finished Products - best Quality improvement - Fareva Fillcare – Best packaging supplier: RPC Manuplastic – Outlets - Best Innovation: 4G Design – Outlets - Best furniture supplier: RTC & Sloane. |
Premium Beauty News - You also presented the Innovation Day. What was it about?
The Body Shop - This was the second edition of the Innovation Day, a major event. The objective being to identify innovations of tomorrow, the upcoming launches. They are proposals, meeting the briefs of the Brand or directly developed by the labs of our suppliers (following a market evolution or based on their knowledge of The Body Shop ranges).
Through the Innovation Day we want to improve synergies with our suppliers to be more market responsive and launch products faster, when demand emerges. We received for example more than 60 drafts from suppliers we had invited like, Chromavis, Laleham, S&J, LF Beauty, Autumn Harp and Fareva. We hope to convert 10% of these innovations and thus irrigate the pipeline of product launches for 2014.
Premium Beauty News - Your brand strategy was redefined, and you are rolling out a new store concept, what are the results? What is the role of suppliers?
The Body Shop - Indeed our "natural and ethical" brand strategy has been redefined and clarified. The Body Shop offer is increasingly focused on ingredients while highlighting our 5 core values. We talk about “story selling” (connect our Values to the product in the purchasing process). In parallel, the goal is to optimize our formats with fewer but more efficient launches, relying on the core products of the brand.
We have also launched a new store design called “Pulse”, which will be identical in all countries. This design is currently being deployed in 400 outlets. This new design is a major change that contributes to the acceleration of our growth.
Our vision of beauty is “Beauty with Heart” which can be translated as follows:
– ’Look Good’ through product efficiency,
– ’Feel Good’ thanks to the texture and fragrances in our formulas,
– ’Do Good’ with the five founding values of the Brand.
Our suppliers have a major role to play either in the relaunch of the Brand, or in the deployment of our new store strategy. They are integrated at a very early stage in these projects. Their contribution is tangible on every pillar of their performance: quality, level of service, sustainable development, innovation and launches and competitiveness.
A sign of their importance for The Beauty Shop, our CEO, Fréderic Ennabli was present at the event, as well as three members of the Executive Committee: Ann Massal - Exec for the Brand, Philippe Reale - Exec for Operations and Paul Mc Greevy - Exec for R&I values.
We are also strengthening our links with L’Oréal by creating the right gateways (that provide results for The Body Shop). Régine Lucas, the new Group Purchasing Director and Isabelle Faivre, Subcontracting and Partnership Purchasing Director, also attended the event.
In conclusion: The Body Shop is enjoying an honourable growth of + 4.9% in 2012, despite a difficult economic environment, and its turnover was of 855.3 million euros, according to figures published by the L’Oréal group. The Brand still has a bright future ahead with the ongoing development of its Internet sales and its store redeployment.
