Beauty and the Covid beast

Industry enters uncharted waters as online sales rise

It was business as usual at Sephora in the SoHo section of Manhattan, New York, on a recent Monday evening, give or take a few facial masks not of the soothing mud variety. Customers were browsing the latest Urban Decay palettes, sitting at mirrored stations getting make-up applied by sales associates and stocking up on luxury skincare, including US$335 (11,000 baht) jars of Crème de la Mer.

Nina Sisco, 24, a fashion publicist, said she wasn’t overly worried about the spread of the new coronavirus.

“I go on the subway every day, I’m still going out,” she said, as she dipped a disposable spool wand into a tube of Tom Ford Beauty mascara (she tried it, but didn’t buy it). “I’m still going to go on vacation, I’m still going to go to Miami.”

Another customer, Piaoxue Zhang, 23, who relocated to New York from China last year, was huddled with a friend by a tower of sanitiser, make-up remover and cotton rounds. Both wore masks but said they didn’t plan to stop shopping for make-up.

But as the crisis mounts, cosmetics companies, whose very business relies upon the now-discouraged practice of touching one’s face, are evaluating their regular practices.

Coty created a “global response team” that meets daily to “actively monitor the situation”. Sephora has its employees wiping down door handles with Clorox wipes hourly, though this week consultants in at least one store were still applying make-up from common testers to customers.

The company has cancelled an annual convention, Sephoria, and said in a statement, in part: “At Sephora, the health and safety of our clients, employees and their families is our first priority. We are monitoring the global Covid-19 outbreak very closely, following the guidance recommended by our government, health officials and local leadership.”

Gucci Westman, a make-up artist and the founder of Westman Atelier, a make-up brand, last month cancelled a trip to Milan and Paris, where she planned to attend events, see clients and to do the make-up for Rosie Assoulin’s presentation, which was called off.

“What’s going to happen is actresses and models will probably end up bringing their own make-up to shoots, or at least their own brushes,” Westman said, adding: “I’m a freak about washing my brushes, but if you’re in contact with all these people, make-up artists who have done shows in Milan? You don’t really want to kiss those people who have been in Milan.”

Make-up is a daily pick-me-up for many even in difficult times, leading to an oft-cited economic indicator known as “the Lipstick Effect” (now debunked). This time Chris Ventry, a vice-president in the consumer and retail practice of the management consultancy SSA & Co, predicted what he called “the Longwear Foundation (or Mascara) Effect”.

“As more and more people are wearing masks, they’re emphasising other forms of make-up,” Ventry said, adding that fabric rubbing against the face stimulated the longwear foundation category in Asia. “People might get very creative with how they accessorise their eyes.”

An industry that relies on constant introduction of new shades and products will have to get creative with how they are sold.

Tiffany Masterson, the founder of Drunk Elephant, one of Sephora’s best-selling skincare brands, was planning to introduce hair and body collections in April but is likely to cancel a pop-up shop scheduled to open in Los Angeles on March 30. (California declared a state of emergency last week.)

“That may not play well — that we’re hosting where multiple people come and hang out,” Masterson said. “It’s not smart.”

Credo Beauty, a retailer focusing on natural and organic make-up with nine stores across the United States, paused all in-store services for this month, said Dawn Dobras, the chief executive. Events planned for April are likely to occur via livestream.

But a splashy Gucci Beauty installation blithely continued in Los Angeles last weekend. The brand, with Sephora, hosted events to celebrate its new mascara, the first new make-up release since the debut of a lipstick collection last year.

“At this point it is too early to quantify the exact impact” of Covid-19, a spokesman for Coty, the beauty and fragrance licensee for Gucci and the parent company of Cover Girl, Rimmel and Sally Hansen, wrote in an email.

“In terms of business impact, beyond the direct impact to China, we believe the coronavirus could negatively impact the broader travel retail sector.”

There may be a silver lining in all this for direct-to-consumer companies like Glossier, popular with millennials.

“There’s a real opportunity for leading online brands because a lot of consumers have always treated luxury beauty as something they want to see, touch, feel and sample in person before they invest in it,” said Clara Sieg, a general partner at Revolution Ventures, an investor in Playa, a haircare brand. “Being forced to make those decisions online gives you more comfort with it in the future.”

Jackie Flam, the chief marketing officer of Pierre Fabre, a beauty company in Paris that owns brands including Avene, Glytone and Klorane, said that last week’s sales for Klorane’s Dry Shampoo at Ulta Beauty were already higher online versus in-store compared with the same period last year.

Sales for Avene’s hand cream in the United States have tripled in the past few weeks, said the company, a result of increased washing and sanitiser use. “Hands are taking a beating,” Flam said.

And at the nail salon, they will encounter stepped-up precautions. Jin Soon Choi, a manicurist and the founder of four nail spas and a namesake nail polish brand, said that patrons were still coming in and that the biggest challenge had been trying to obtain masks for staff members. Once optional for technicians, masks are now mandatory in her establishment, along with gloves.

Even as directives about public health increase in urgency, vanity can sometimes battle with common sense. Dr Shereene Idriss, a dermatologist in New York, said that a patient who was put on home quarantine asked if she could still come in for a scheduled nonmedical procedure.

“Cosmetic treatments do not immunise you from potentially spreading the virus,” Idriss said. “At least she was responsible enough to call and let us know, and she didn’t sneak in.”

As more and more people are wearing masks, they’re emphasising other forms of make-up