French Beauty Catalog Primps for U.S. Debut

Paris-based Le Club des Createurs de Beaute will issue an American version of its beauty catalog next month.

The catalog is a joint venture between cosmetics titan L’Oreal and DM firm 3 Suisses International. It will mail to 1 million prospects and an 18,000-name customer file assembled during U.S. test mailings earlier this year, says general manager Mark O’Berski.

The house file will receive the full 92-page catalog, to be published twice a year, while prospects will get a 42-page version. Customers will also receive update mailings on a regular basis.

O’Berski says the magalog-format catalog-which also goes by the nickname CCB-Paris-expects the U.S. to eventually be its largest market in the world. The catalog debuted in Paris in 1987, and has since expanded to Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Japan. The company expects to handle 4.8 million orders this year.

The target audience is women in their early 30s who are active, urban, image conscious and have greater-than-average spending power. O’Berski says he was pleased with response to the initial test mailings. He added that apparel and magazine files pulled well for CCB-Paris, which also participates in the Abacus and SmartBase co-op databases.

The main challenge, O’Berski feels, will be educating U.S. consumers on the catalog’s brands, which are exclusive to CCB-Paris. Only one, agnhs b. makeup, has previously been sold in this country, in the designer’s nine U.S. boutiques. Other brands include Prof. Jean Cotte skin care, Jean Marc Maniatis hair care, and fragrances by designers Michel Klein, Tan Giudicelli and Souleiado director Jean-Pierre Demery.

Even though L’Oroal owns half the company, and is a brand highly recognizable to U.S. consumers, its name is not used in the catalog. “We don’t want people to think this is ‘L’Oreal by Mail,'” he says.

Makeup will comprise half of the catalog’s sales and skin care 25%, notes O’Berski. Specific products have been created for the U.S. market, including more fluid moisturizers (France and Europe prefer heavier creams) and more foundation shades, because of the greater diversity of the U.S. population.

Creative is split between the main offices in Paris and Marke Communications, a New York agency that is helping to “translate” the catalog for American audiences.

Marketing director Thomas Romieu points out that in France CCB-Paris routinely gets a healthy 5% response to prospect mailings, thanks largely to deep discounts, premiums and lotteries-a tactic the company had to use because of the high competition in the DM beauty market there. For the U.S., however, CCB-Paris plans to go with a different approach, preferring to rely on “everyday low prices,” which will likely mean lower prospecting responses.

“We don’t want to offer constant phony sales,” he says. “We want to create more customer loyalty than in France and have a ‘truer’ relationship with a customer who will order more for product and service than gimmicks.”

The company will launch an e-commerce Web site (www.ccb-paris.com) next spring.

Genesis Direct has suspended its two-year catalog buying spree as part of a $21-million-a-year cost-cutting restructuring plan. The company intends to close four catalogs and as many as four satellite business offices, according to president/CEO Warren Struhl.

Catalogs to be discontinued are Ninos, Global Friends, Training Camp and Romance Boutique.

Struhl and CFO Ronald Benanto went public with the plan last month, calling it “a stop to catch our breath.”

The acquisition program was being interrupted, Benanto says, because the use of cash or stock to fund these purchases-given the low value of Genesis’ shares-was “not in the best interest of the company.”

Benanto notes that Genesis has no immediate plans to resume acquisitions when and if its stock reaches a specific price. He believes “the original vision of the company is still intact and it’s still our goal” to have a $1-billion-a-year business at the turn of the century by acquiring a catalog a month over a two-year period.

Genesis, Secaucus, NJ, is looking to make greater use of its 24-million-name in-house database to decrease costs and its reliance on list rentals.