Establishing Prada Beauty in travel retail
L’Oréal Travel Retail Luxe Division Worldwide General Manager Baptiste Beau talks about his overall mission for Prada Beauty in travel retail and explores how the beauty category can and should evolve to meet the needs of the next generation of beauty consumers.
Introduction: With a glittering portfolio of luxury beauty brands such as YSL Beauté, Lancôme and Giorgio Armani Beauty, L’Oréal Travel Retail Luxe Division Worldwide General Manager Baptiste Beau is a busy man.
With the launch of Prada Beauty, the full expression of the brand’s new triple-axis portfolio of makeup, fragrance and skincare, Beau’s already active year of launches, openings and activations is bound to get even busier.
According to Beau, L’Oréal Travel Retail has big plans for Prada Beauty, with a strategy of reinforcing its already strong fragrance presence in travel retail and launching makeup and skincare in key hubs. This will be complemented by blockbuster beauty pop-ups, tech-augmented services and, of course, rich visual merchandising and retail design.
But that’s not all. As international passenger figures rebound, the industry has seen that conversion may not exactly be following the same trajectory. This challenge, according to Beau, can be addressed by gaining a better understanding of evolving consumer needs, better partnerships and offering the right retail mix.
In this Q&A, Beau shares his insights into Prada Beauty’s USP in the competitive perfumes & cosmetics category, how the Luxe Division is taking on the challenge of conversion and how Trinity partnerships should evolve to deliver a 4D travel retail experience.
L’Oréal Travel Retail Luxe Division Worldwide General Manager Baptiste Beau
In your view, what USP does Prada Beauty add to L’Oréal Travel Retail’s luxe portfolio?
Prada Beauty clearly reinforces the strength and complementarity of the brands in our portfolio, as it is so important to offer the best of beauty to all travellers in the world.
Prada is one of the hottest fashion brands according to the Lyst Index, with a very distinctive positioning based on three main values: sophistication, avant-garde and a touch of eccentricity.
This is exactly the way we have designed Prada Beauty. Rethinking beauty in a disruptive way – for all categories – to give customers a premium beauty offering across all three axes of makeup, fragrance and skincare. The brand was engineered with tech, not only through its products but also in the consumer experience it delivers.
Let’s take the example of makeup. It’s all about self-expression and ‘Exploring all the shades of you’, as the tagline says. With fashion-inspired colours and smart textures inspired by the fashion fabrics and refillable products from day one, with no compromise on user experience, Prada Beauty empowers our customers to express and reinvent through beauty.
Prada Beauty will only be launching makeup and skincare in key travel retail locations globally with openings already planned in Dubai and Hainan for early 2024
What is your overall vision for Prada Beauty in the channel? And how do you plan to leverage Prada Beauty’s triple-axis (fragrance, skincare and makeup) portfolio?
We are – for sure – very ambitious with Prada Beauty in travel retail. Our aim is to reach all travellers and offer them a part of the Prada experience through Beauty.
We will focus on making Prada fragrances available in most of the airports worldwide. We will offer our complete range of makeup and skincare in the key hubs in the coming years, by expanding our distribution through premium locations where we can showcase Prada’s powerful brand equity.
Prada Beauty should be immediately recognisable and echo the same design codes as Prada’s fashion boutique. This is exemplified by the signature Prada green colour and black and white chequered floors. Most importantly, each traveller should be able to enjoy a memorable beauty experience thanks to our formulas, products and personalised services. In other words, each traveller should be pampered the Prada way.
Prada Beauty has always embraced blockbuster animations in travel retail, particularly in Asia Pacific with the launch of Paradoxe – do you have any plans in this space for the makeup and skincare lines too?
Our number one obsession remains to establish Prada Beauty in travel retail through state-of-the art counters. This has already started in 2023 and will of course continue next year.
But you are right, it’s also Prada’s trademark to enchant travellers through stunning animations, as we did for Paradoxe. So yes, soon you will see some surprising new retail animations, starting with Asia Pacific.
In Cannes, former L’Oréal Travel Retail General Manager for Travel Retail Worldwide Vincent Boinay highlighted that one of the main challenges faced by the channel is that despite the return of pax numbers, conversion isn’t rebounding at the same rate. From the Luxe Division point of view, how are you taking on this challenge?
Conversion is indeed a very important topic for our industry. To tackle this challenge, we need first and foremost to better understand travellers’ expectations when it comes to shopping experience and behaviours. That’s why it’s paramount to work hand-in-hand with our retailers on this important topic by exchanging data and testing new concepts. At L’Oréal, we believe that the combination of the right brands and the right offer with a personalised and human experience will make the difference.
We need the right brands and the right offer first to attract travellers into stores and recruit new customers in travel retail. That is where having a wide and complementary portfolio of brands in L’Oréal is a key asset to providing beauty for all travellers. That is also why it is so important to be clear on the role and target of each of our brands.
Delivering the right experience is tantamount as well as engaging and enchanting travellers during their time in the airport. Because beauty is a truly sensorial category, travellers need to experience and feel the brands and products with the right level of service.
The role played by the Beauty Advisors is key and can even be ‘amplified’ by innovative beauty tech devices to personalise the skin diagnosis and find the right skincare or makeup routine. At L’Oréal, we have invested a lot in pioneering beauty tech services, such as foundation shade matching or advanced skin analysis devices. And Prada Beauty has its role to play in this conversion quest.
While expanding Prada Beauty’s store presence is a key priority, blockbuster beauty animations such as the Prada Gifting Factory in Changi will continue to play a key role
Experience is indeed a key part of the travel retail environment. How is Prada Beauty delivering in that space?
On top of state-of-the art service levels, we are also incorporating technology at Prada Beauty to build some truly innovative consumer experiences. Be it the UV printing and personalisation of your Prada products with archival prints from the vault of Madame Prada herself, or the new-age augmented-reality filters that let you live and share the Prada universe with your friends on social media. We want our experience to leave you with a memorable signature.
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In September, Prada Beauty opened its first counter in Milan Malpensa Airport in partnership with Avolta – what are your expansion plans for the brand in travel retail?
Since then, we already opened counters in Samaritaine Paris with DFS Group and two boutique flagships in Asia in Hainan. These can be found at the cdf Haikou International Duty Free Shopping Complex and cdf Sanya International Duty Free Shopping Complex Block C with China Duty Free Group.
Our first Prada Beauty pop-up will soon be launching at Dubai Airport and we will be welcoming Prada Beauty at Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport by Q1 2024. This is just the beginning, with more exciting openings to come in the key international hubs.
“Conversion is indeed a very important topic for our industry. To tackle this challenge, we need first and foremost to better understand travellers’ expectations when it comes to shopping experience and behaviours.”
– L’Oréal Travel Retail Luxe Division Worldwide General Manager Baptiste Beau
And how do you think Trinity partnerships should evolve to better meet the needs of evolving consumer demographics – especially in the beauty space?
Today Trinity partnership brings to consumers a 3D shopping experience compared to the traditional 2D way of retailing. However, now the world of visualisation has moved towards a 4D experience, which is why we should change the Trinity into a Quaternity.
This needs airports, retailers, brands and airlines all joining hands to make it an end-to-end experience for travellers and engaging them at every step of their journey. This is also very related to your previous question on conversion.
All stakeholders should work together to improve and reshape the travel retail experience. For example, when L’Oréal Travel Retail signed a worldwide partnership with Tripadvisor, this was our goal: to engage with travellers at different stages of the journey and enrich it for everyone. The first campaigns that we have activated in 2023 have already confirmed that we are going in the right direction.
Spotlight Series - February 2024