- Beauty Cluster held the Beauty Retail Forum, bringing together more than 80 professionals and experts from the sector.
- Consumer, trends and technology were the three central verticals throughout the day.
Barcelona, 01 December 2021. The Beauty Cluster has held the Beauty Retail Forum, a 360º event to share and debate about the present and future of the retail sector in the cosmetics, perfumery and personal care industry, bringing together more than 80 professionals from the sector at the UPF Barcelona School of Management.
The institutional welcome was given by Mary Carmen Muiños, Marketing Director at Pierre Fabre Ibérica and Vice-President of the Beauty Cluster, who stressed the importance of adapting and training in complex situations, such as the one we are experiencing in the current pandemic context. Rosa López, Beauty & Fashion Business Director at KANTAR, was in charge of opening the series of talks on the Post-Covid consumer.
The pandemic has been a catalyst for consumer trends and habit changes. Despite driving the growth of e-commerce, the offline channel remains the consumer’s favourite. The main challenge for brands continues to be omni-channel or, in other words, the integration of both channels into the overall brand strategy; a concept known as phygital. As Laureano Turienzo, president of the Spanish Retail Association, later confirmed, “consumers are going to be hybrids, we must stop talking about channels, and integrate everything within the same strategy“.
Sara Jiménez, Academic Specialist at Beauty Business School, then inspired the audience with the latest trends that are being seen globally. Seoul, Shanghai, New York, Seattle and even Barcelona were some of the examples highlighted. Product takes a back seat to consumer engagement through a memorable experience at the point of sale and brand identification.
Knowing what other retailers are doing can be a source of inspiration for beauty brands. Miguel Ángel Aranaz, commercial director of TRISON in Spain, showed some digital solutions applicable to sectors such as fashion or automotive to create experiences and connect with customers at the point of sale. Not forgetting the pharmacy, the main sales channel for dermo-cosmetics brands, Nacho Alba and Ana Garcillán, representing the Caher Group, presented innovative solutions that encourage prescription.
As Gemma Cuscó, owner of TMM Group, said, “technology has to be understood and worked on to get the most out of it. There are endless technological possibilities that we will have to study in order to create more segmented and personalised strategies, integrated with data feeds, that allow us to adapt our prices, services or the communications themselves according to where, to whom, when, etc., we are targeting“.
The day ended with a round table with experts in which we had the pleasure of having Carles Solsona (Ventas de Perfumería y cosmética) as moderator, and with participants such as Juan Corominas (COPA cosmetics), Fernando Esteban (Rituals Cosmetics), Jordi Sanz (Perfumeria Júlia), Xavier Gómez (Ramón Monegal Perfumes) and Maribel Torres (Comercio del Año).
Shopping will remain a leisure activity. But for this to happen, retailers need to give shoppers a reason to leave home and visit the physical shop. According to Juan Corominas, “the increase of the online channel is an unavoidable fact, and although the physical channel continues to be predominant, there must be coherence between both channels.”
We are facing a more activist consumer, focused on slowlive, who welcomes the virtues of teleworking and is looking for a more personalised service. There is no doubt that people are an added value of physical shops, however, we cannot forget that technology gives us the opportunity to evolve towards new modes of communication in order to capture new audiences.
