MUMBAI, India — German beauty company Artdeco Group launched its masstige makeup line, called BeYu, in India earlier this year — and has already opened in more than 200 doors in the last four months.
Make Up Factory, the higher-priced beauty brand from the same group will be launched next month, followed by Anny, a nail polish brand, in early 2018.
This represents a second wind for the Artdeco Group, which has sales of 170 million euros. The company had launched the more premium-priced Artdeco brand in India eight years ago, but had to beat a retreat, withdrawing the brand from India in 2012.
This time around, Artdeco started with the lower price points of BeYu, which had 2016 sales of 20 million euros and now competes in India with Revlon, L’Oréal Paris and Indian masstige labels such as Chambor and Colorbar.
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The German cosmetics firm appears to be taking into account its earlier mistakes and going with renewed fervor in the fast-growing Indian beauty and personal-care market, whose 2016 sales totaled $12.5 billion, according to market research firm Euromonitor International. Color cosmetics is said to account for $980 million of that 2016 total.
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Sascha Reinhard, managing partner, BeYu told WWD that the previous experience has not diluted his vision for growth in India. “I believe this is the right time to launch BeYu in India as the disposable incomes of the growing middle class is much higher than it was eight years ago. We have partnered with Kaunis to build our India footprint and will be available in 1,000 stores in three years,” he said. He felt the Indian market has matured, with an increasing affordability by consumers.
“Our price points were unaffordable at that time; when lipsticks cost 300 rupees or $4.67, ours were priced at 750 rupees or $11.67. Today, Indians are paying upwards of 800 rupees for a lipstick. BeYu price-points start at 395 rupees for nail varnish and goes up to 2,150 rupees for face cosmetics. He asserted that with BeYu’s average selling price of 975 rupees, “we have no doubt that the products will fly,” he said.
The German firm also has signed up with a new distributor in a market where older distributors like Baccarose and Beauty Concepts Pvt Ltd. have long held their own. Ajay Ghooli of Kaunis Marketing Services Pvt has tied up with modern retail chains including New U, Lifestyle, Health & Glow and Central following a model of kiosks, shops-in-shops and trained beauty advisers who will get a share in the company over time. “With Make Up Factory, which we will launch shortly, we will do stand-alone stores. It is the luxury segment of the Artdeco group and in terms of quality it’s on par with MAC Cosmetics.”
BeYu has 500 stockkeeping units, of which 70 have been launched in India after analyzing the shades that work in the local market. “What we’ve done is given a collection of shades that we think will work here,” he added.
“ India behaves very differently in terms of colors from North to South,” Ghooli continued. “The North is more of pinks mauves, and South is more of browns and maroons. There is a huge disparity and it’s a nightmare for any color cosmetics brand to manage all of these things. Now we are working a lot on technology to have the fastest forecasting system to help us service the market to a great extent.”BeYu is also readying to do what few global brands have done – come up with an exclusive collection for India. Reinhard said these should be ready to launch in the first quarter of 2018. Global business has been growing for both BeYu and the pricier Artdeco. While BeYu has 60 percent of its business from global markets, Artdeco has an approximate 30 percent, Reinhard said. Earlier this month, Artdeco partnered with supermodel Claudia Schiffer to launch her first limited-edition makeup collection. The range includes lipsticks, blusher, foundation, nail polishes and eye shadows in sleek gold and pink packaging.