Category: Brand Story
Five keys for implementing successful cosmetic OEM/ODM
It is worth noting that recently it has been showing a rising tendency for global cosmetic brands to look for Korean cosmetic OEM/ODM companies to develop their own brand. It is considered that the…
Source: Five keys for implementing successful cosmetic OEM/ODM
CLARINS designs women’s body
Who established the world famous women’s body care brand “CLARINS”? A woman or a man? How could a man come up with such a delicate cosmetic product like women’s body care? Jacques Courtin-Clarins, the founder of Clarins, was a medical student but took a dramatic turn after an incident.
After the World War II in 1945, Clarins, a medical student at that time, witnessed a patient agonizing over his body scar after a medical surgery. He realized that medical treatment alone could not offer patients perfect cure.
In 1954, he started a spa business in France and by 1960’s he expanded his business to over 100 branches throughout France. Through these branches, Clarins started cosmetic business with his own body care products.
The representative items in Clarins are body care oil. Tonic Body Treatment Oil for skin firming, Relax Body Treatment Oil for body relaxation and Angti O Body Treatment Oil for de-swelling and excessive water abstraction are the representative body care oil of Clarins. These items have been settled as the world bestsellers since their launch
Clarins has a variety of body care products from contouring items for body line correction to a range of product sets for various skin types as well as special items for the pregnant ladies. The amazingly wide spectrum of Clarins’ body care products come from professionally summarized brand knowhow from the spa business Clarins himself had managed. Also Clarins is the first cosmetic brand that the customer’s card is added into all the products in order to hear customer’s voice. Shaping Facial Lift Wrap that reduces facial swelling is the Clarins’ genuine product the customer’s voice is reflected.
Clarins, since its establishment, is consistently pursuing only one goal to care about women’s healthy beauty at a reasonable price.
François Nars completed ‘NARS’
In 1994, François Nars, a highly renowned make-up artist from France, launched the NARS brand at Bannys department store in New York.
His product, ‘Orgasm Blusher’, specially became popular to women. It was ashamed that women directly said its name, but they could freely speak out the word ‘orgasm’ in NARS cosmetic shop.
It could be a high calculated marketing strategy, but the brand NARS chased for the women’s free. In addition, Numerous make-up artists and Hollywood stars prefer NARS products because of the high product quality. NARS product is targeting for trendy women.
The formulation of NARS contains highly concentrated particles, so the colors of NARS products are particularly vivid comparing to the other make-up cosmetics.François Nars was a great make- up artist and photographer with superior ability as well. He takes all his advertisement photos by himself.
From his advertising photos, we can find out the aim of NARS. He is trying to show various make-up products to express women’s natural beauty and characteristic, not to do the pretty make-up products.
NARS could become a brand symbolizing ‘modern times’ from the pursuit and form a modern cult classic image.
Beautiful make-up starts with beautiful skin
Make-up Artist, Shu Uemura said that ‘Beautiful make-up starts with beautiful skin’. As make-up artist, he left behind very remarkable achievements and also the amazing performance as cosmetic brand creator.
The most marked characteristic of his new brand was cleansing oil as he was accurately aware of the relation between make-up products and skin care. It was awesome thinking that the face can be cleaned by oil in 1960s. Uemura, worked as a Hollywood make-up artist, found out that the actors remove their make-up with the cooking oil. In 1970, Uemura released the cleansing oil named as ‘Unmask’ to cosmetics market based on this observation.
His cleansing oil was upgraded customizing to fit various skin types in 2002 after numerous researching and development. In addition to the cleansing oil, he launched the artificial eyelashes to cosmetic market as a product line creator in 1969. He earned honorable mention for the product as ‘the awning protecting eyes.’
He also started the make-up show and make up look for the first time. At that time, it was known for the general public as the make-up was secretly done. He led the public to change the thinking of make-up by amazing method like make-up show and make-up look which was based on the concept, ‘the end of fashion is face’
He had the brand philosophy as ‘Art of Beauty’ and considered ‘Beauty’ as an art of daily life. The brand Shuemura was merged with Loreal group in 2000. Nowadays, Shuemura has been widely recognized as a global beauty brand, not just as a Japanese brand.
What can we earn from the Baumann Skin Type?
We looked into skin type – normal, oily, mixed, and sensitive types from the last posting. If this verification is still considered quite unclear, we may further refer to Baumann skin type. Baumann, professor of Miami University, classified the skin type into 16 categories in 2004. Everybody can find out one’s own skin type by the online survey made by Baumann. Your skin type can be easily verified according to the final scores when the survey is complete.. This can be understood as the expansion of the existing classification of skin type.
Firstly, Baumann suggests the 4 basic frameworks of skin type as belows.
1.Oily vs dry
2.Sensitive vs resistant
3.Pigmented vs non-pigmented
4.Wrinkle prone vs tight
By Group [eX] (graphic designer) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
She claimed that we can determine 16 skin types with the combinations based on the 4 frameworks.This framework is closely associated with skin metabolism and functions.When the skin functions are normally operated, the skin would always be in perfection.The skin, however, can suffer from lack of some factors due to the aging, genetic reasons and surrounding environments. Skin care products can assist the skin to make up for such deficiency. The key role is now up to the product users, to know their skins’ deficiency in order to correctly-replenish it.
Baumann’s skin type classification will be useful for everybody to find the weakness of their own skin.For example, what kind of cosmetic product will be effective for someone whose skin is oily sensitive type according to Baumann’s classification? This skin type’s person is prone to suffer from acne, and it may be helpful to use cosmetics containing the ingredients controlling the acne such as retinoid, antibiotic, benzoyl peroxide and anti inflammatory.
In the case of oily resistant skin type, the skin mostly appears greasy, but does not result to acnes. The person would rather focus on the pigmentations or wrinkle improvement while using cosmetics containing such as Talc and Kaolin which can reduce the sebum. In the case of dry-sensitive skin, the skin barrier may be destroyed at the high probability. It would be better for the person to use moisturizers including ceramide, fatty acid and cholesterol. Accordingly, we can prescribe the cosmetics with diagnosis of skin.
We can often spot the destruction of the skin barrier among sensitive skin types. In this case, we should care for the skin to preserve the skin barrier. Some useful methods to care for the sensitive skin are ‘light cleansing, proper moisturizing, and essential UV block’. ‘Light cleansing’ is necessary because heavy cleansing can rinse off the NMF. The ‘proper moisturizing’ is to reduce the multiple uses of numerous cosmetics with each-contained moisturizing agents, as it may result in interruption of moisturizing function. Regarding ‘essential UV block’, it would be better to use a mild UV block cosmetic in order to reduce skin damage and irritation.
Baumann also stressed the ‘pigmentation’ among the classification of skin type. This, of course, considers the skin color and race, but moreover the probability of unexpected spots appearing on the skin. Baumann also considered the possibilities of wrinkle appearance by environmental factors such as UV affection, excluding the genetic factor which is beyond control.
The methods of improving wrinkles are to prevent the loss of collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid in dermis from environmentally harmful influences – ultraviolet is a key factor in affecting the loss, so it is important to protect the skin from harmful sunray exposure. Wrinkles are also closely related to inflammation, so it is necessary to avoid smoking and air pollution, take antioxidant supplements and to have with enough fruits and vegetables in order to prevent the skin from wrinkling.
The molecule size of the cosmetics ingredients like collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid is too big that it is cannot technically penetrate into the skin. However, cosmetics including the ingredients of retinoid, vitamin C, Cu peptide can stimulate the growth of collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid. In Korea, adenosine is famous as a functional ingredient for wrinkle improvement. When adenosine is combined with 3 phosphoric acids in the skin, it develops into an ATP which stimulates the synthesis of protein and activates the skin metabolism. In result, skin wrinkle would be improved.
We have looked into the Baumann skin type so far. This is to fine-tune the existing method, so that we will be able to properly and effectively determine our skin types.If everyone can properly utilize the skin type classification methods, they will be fully rewarded with benefits of the ability to distinguish and use proper cosmetics in order for effective skin care.
How can we distinguish our own skin type?
It is not simple to distinguish one’s own skin type. One’s skin can be changed by aging and differ according to individual adaption or different reaction to surrounding environment. Furthermore, the “normal” skin type cannot be easily defined or standardized. If a new-born baby’s skin is defined as a normal skin type, we can say most adults have an “abnormal” skin type.
Human skin changes through adolescent period. Moisturizing power and skin function will become decreased and wrinkles on the skin appear as approaching the middle age. The whole skin functions will become less-active when becoming old, resulting in signs of wrinkles, spots, lack of moisture and dark circles.
Dermatologists generally define a normal skin type as the skin condition of the time when skin functions work well. That is to say, one’s skin before the adolescent period is considered as a normal skin type. The skin is determined as ‘normal’ when normal skin functions such as water release by epidermis, oil release by sebaceous glands to outside, anti-bacteria, pH control, creation of collagen, and etc, works actively.
One of the skin functions is creation and exfoliation of stratum corneum. Skin cells travel outward from stratum basale and change into stratum corneum to detach out eventually from the skin at every 28 days. If this function does not work well, the skin has the possibility of some problems. If a dark circle occurs or skin becomes thicker, problems can be suspected regarding in cornification function.
The oil of skin, which is created by sebaceous glands, controls pH level as well as protecting skin moisture and prevents microorganism from breeding. Sebaceous glands may release more oil than the average level due to aging or impacts from the surrounding environment – in this case, the skin becomes oily. Extended pores, acne or blackheads are key signs of oily skin types.
A dry type skin is the case when most skin moisture is released externally. Aquaporin is a cell that conveys water in the skin, acting as the water pipe. Dry skin may be resulted from functional issues of Aquaporin or TEWL(transepidermal water loss). Dry skin may also have issues of lacking Natural Moisturizing Factor (NMF) in the skin. That is mainly because the NMF is washed off by frequent showers, use of improper cosmetics or skin damages. The common features of dry skin types are unnoticeable pores, sudden red spots/erythema and low elasticity.
A mixed type skin has combination features of oily and dry types. For example, one’s T zone is oily, while the other parts are dry. There are also sensitive skin types which cannot be easily defined by the former classification – oily, dry or mixed.
To summarize, skin type can be roughly classified by the above 5 types. The classification, however, is likely to show big individual difference and deviation per race, region, and environment. It is generally considered a dry type skin is a contrary meaning of oily skin. But as mentioned above, a skin can have both features of oily and dry in the mixed type skin – so it is possible to conclude that the two types are not just a conflicting, oppositional concept.
Accordingly, it will be useful to sort out or clarify his/her own skin type in order to make the proper choice of cosmetics.
Bobbi Brown – Natural Looking Makeup
Bobbi Brown’s story says that “It all started with a simple idea- natural looking makeup.” The idea is reflected in Bobbi Brown products. Newly launched in 1991 …
Bobbi Brown – Natural Looking Makeup
Bobbi Brown’s story says that “It all started with a simple idea- natural looking makeup.” The idea is reflected in Bobbi Brown products. Newly launched <Bobbi’s Essentials Lipcolor> in 1991 rapidly changed lip stick trends at that time.
The shades of <Bobbi’s Essentials Lipcolor> were arranged based on the human skin color while most of the colors of existing lip stick products were mainly vivid color range. Natural color gave artificial color a shock.
Bobbi Brown was a specialist as makeup artist. She was exclusively in charge of makeup for models of Vogue front pages. She was received honorable mentions by her customers – famous people and star entertainers on the natural makeup. The distinct feature of her makeup style which was called <No makeup, makeup look> is seems to have makeup or not.
Her makeup style was more spotlighted as being interlinked with minimalism trend which emphasized simplicity in 1990’s. She finally launched the brand <Bobbi Brown> and has been on the successful road. The product line was arranged by her own makeup feature. Foundation with similar tone of human skin and nude tone lip stick were the examples.
She said in an interview “Whitening makeup which unnaturally changes one’s face tone into different tone is an outmoded makeup.” She asserted that the old thinking considers white skin symbolizes wealth and high class. It is probable that Bobbi Brown has been remembered for a person who sought natural beauty. Her philosophy on the cosmetic will be remained for a long time.
Bobbi Brown was merged into ESTEE LAUDER group in 1995. Bobbi Brown has been maintaining its reputation as a top color makeup brand and launching various color makeup products.
Fast, easy and interesting cosmetics brand concept
At the point that how a cosmetic brand story is made, we can say that <BENEFIT> has many accidental and interesting stories rather than marketing story. If we review the birth story of Tint, we inevitably should say <Rose Tint> – at present, BeneTint.
In 1977 a strip dancer asked Jean and Jane, cofounder of <BENEFIT>, to develop a product can be applied on her nipples. The sisters made the product using rose leaf for her. The product became popular and has been categorized as a Tint for lip and cheek.
It is very interesting story that the sisters made up their mind to start cosmetic business. The twin sister, Jean and Jane were fashion model in 180cm tall. The sister decided to run a business rather than to get married, as they thought that fashion model could not be their lifelong career. They intended to choose their business type between cosmetic and restaurant by tossing a coin. The result of tossing a coin was cosmetic business. In 1989 they opened a makeup boutique <The Face Place> in San Fransisco and they achieved a great success.
Jean and Jane did not consider sincerely making their new brand name to expand their target market to entire USA. Jane had been to Italy and was reminded Italian shout “Bene.” The sister created the famous brand name <BENEFIT> by just combining the “Bene” and “fit” which means suitable or appropriate.
The brand concept of <benefit> is very creative. The product concept is to immediately solve routine problems of women and connote humor in the product. The product of <benefit> is fast, easy and interesting. <BENEFIT> gained great success by launching products, <Hello Flawless! Powder foundation> and <Brow Zings> as well as providing beauty services by <Brow Bar>.
“Laughter is the best cosmetic!” is the catchphrase of <BENEFIT>. Even though <BENEFIT> was merged by LVMH, the original brand concept has been remaining. Jean and Jane in early days learned out that humor is all-time culture and life style. <BENEFIT> is well known for its distinctive marketing strategies. For example, <BENEFIT> printed film clips of 1950s and 1960s to reflect the old culture and retro style animation on the packaging. <BENEFIT> also took a doll as its model instead of human.
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