Retail Week speaks to Avon’s global chief executive, Kristof Neirynck, on physical retail partnership with Superdrug, modernisation and what made the cosmetics company the original influencer-led brand.
Neirynck spent over a decade of his marketing career working on consumer brands at P&G. His other workplaces include Gucci – where he led the make-up and fragrance business – Walgreen Boots Alliance, and Boots in the UK.
He joined Avon three years ago, as the chief marketing officer before being promoted to the role of global chief executive at the beginning of this year. Here he talks about why Avon needed to shake things up, the new strategy ahead and how there isn’t a single part of the brand that hasn’t been given a makeover.
Why do you think it was important to shake things up at Avon and do more than just door-to-door selling?
“Almost three years ago, from a marketing perspective, we looked at what consumers think about our brand. What are the barriers that consumers have when it comes to buying Avon? And interestingly enough, in any country, seven out of the top 10 barriers to the brand were all linked with access. They said, ‘Look, I would love to buy Avon, but I don’t know a representative’, or ‘I don’t really like to shop with a representative’, or ‘I would prefer to touch the products before I buy’.
“The brand is still very loved in many of our markets. Less so in the UK, but particularly in some of our more developing markets, like South Africa, the Philippines, Romania and all of Turkey. We’re actually still a top three beauty brand with a top three brand health.
“That gives you a clear idea that there is a huge opportunity there, because people want the brand. However, we just make it too difficult for them to buy the brand. And this is not to say that direct selling is not important because it remains our core business. But that’s not for everyone. And so that’s why we put a lot of emphasis now on increasing the access to the brand, and we do that in a number of ways.”
What are you doing to modernise the brand?
“There are three strategic pillars of what we’re trying to do; one is modernised relationship selling, so by digitising our reps and enabling our reps to open up stores.
“The second pillar is selling in a more omnichannel way. Hence the play we’re doing with Superdrug and AS Watson. And then the third thing is modernising the brand; packaging, brand portfolio, advertising, communication, the whole thing. So it’s been a very exciting journey. There is no part of the brand that I haven’t touched either as a chief marketing officer or now as a chief executive officer.”
How have you benefitted from the growing partnership with Superdrug?
“We did a Superdrug trial in 100 stores when we launched about a year ago, but then very rapidly, based on sales performance, they rolled us out in 600, and by the end of the year in 650 stores.
“Initially, there was a lot of fear that these stores were going to cannibalise the business of our representatives. But actually, we’ve seen that our representatives within a five-mile radius of a Superdrug store were selling 18% more than the representatives that didn’t have a store. And that was just from this halo effect from seeing the brand.”
What do you think would be the future of door-to-door selling when social ecommerce reaches its peak?
“The reality is that the old style of door-to-door selling will continue to reduce. And that’s why we are very actively working with our representatives to train them to really get more comfortable with online selling, like, for example, TikTok Shop. Or, for example, some of our representatives sell on marketplaces like Amazon, and they have their own store there. Some of them sell through WhatsApp.
“There was this one representative in Italy who created little WhatsApp groups of her friends and her customers, the ones that like makeup, the ones that like fragrance, etc. And then when our digital brochure came out, she would just send direct links to her customers to say, ‘oh, this is a new product’, or ‘you should try it’, or ‘this is a product on great promotion’, etc. But she had never gone door-to-door, and she was actually one of our top sellers in Italy. She was 18 years old by the way, and a student in beauty aesthetics, and that’s how she sold.
“If you think about Avon, it was originally an influencer brand. A bit analogue, door-to-door, but, you know, we need to make sure that we reinvent ourselves for a more digitised world where people still want to hear about the products.”
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