Deeper Than Skin
Italian cosmetics company Collistar wants to capitalise on its domestic market growth to build its presence in travel-retail. Marek Kolasinski finds out more
BEING a newcomer in travel-retail/dutyfree is never easy, and with the kind of competition encountered in the cosmetics and skincare category, some would wonder, why bother? But one newcomer has carefully planned its growth from its troubled origins to the leading position it achieved today in domestic markets.
Collistar – currently Italy’s number one cosmetics and skincare company – was initially the cosmetics
division of a big Italian pharmaceutical company called Zambeletti. In 1982 it was placed under the management of the still current boss, Daniela Sacerdote and slowly made its way to the top.
The strategy was simple: become number one in the Italian domestic market and then start expanding
abroad. And the same strategy is being applied to the travel-retail channel. “We started last year in the Italian duty-free market,” Paolo Bevegni, international director for Collistar tells Frontier. “And now we are already present in the main airports, airlines and cruise lines. Next year we will start development in Europe.”
The strategy makes sense, from a purely logical point of view. If you are the number one brand in a domestic market, demand will automatically be created in the duty-free channel. Expanding one’s presence from there to other countries becomes much easier to achieve, particularly when one can
prove strong results.
The problem, however is that competition in the segment is fierce. More and more companies join
the channel with exclusive products and merchandising ideas. And the channel’s ever-present challenge always remains the same: space, space, space. “The market is more and more competitive in terms of space,” Bevegni says, “but we believe the key is to offer the correct selection of products.”
Having made its name on the notoriously choosy Italian market, Collistar had to develop the right mix of products to present on the duty-free stage. Having a wide range of both cosmetics and skincare is not always an advantage when one only has 10 or 20 square metres at one’s disposal. Choosing the
right product mix is essential as any mistake could result in poor sales figures, which in turn would result in the product – and possibly the entire range – being de-listed.
But Collistar is well aware of this issue and already they are taking steps to develop a range of products to suit this particular channel. “We have already developed the first duty-free special offers with a range of travel kits. I think it is essential to offer the passenger a useful and convenient occasion to purchase in duty-free,” says Bevegni.
But this is not all Collistar is doing. After all, every skincare company has developed its own travel sets, and the idea is hardly innovative. And this is where Collistar has been clever: in cementing its position as the leader in its home market, it has created the brand awareness it needed to generate demand
– in Italy in the first instance, but this is soon to grow as the company expands its international
reach. “Visibility and image in duty-free are even more important than for the local market,” Bevegni explains, “so we developed a special merchandising structure that in compact sizes may express the
brand identity.”
Despite the challenges presented by the competition and lack of space in travel-retail, Bevegni still considers the channel an important one, even if “for the time being it is not yet a source of revenue.”
However, Bevegni believes that it is “a fundamental instrument to increase international brand awareness. Of course,” he adds, “in the long run I am confident it will also become an important business.”
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