With a career spanning over 30 years in retail, Hilary Dart was recently the keynote speaker at the Kesslers Innovation Seminar, where she discussed beauty retailing of the past and spoke about how the market has had to adapt to survive in the present, as Katie Middleweek reports
Previously holding positions such as head of beauty at Selfridges and President of Calvin Klein Worldwide, Hilary Dart is a woman who knows a thing or two about beauty retailing. She feels the retail market has changed a great deal over the past 30 years and puts this down to two main things – a change in communication methods and a change in the retail environment itself.
Says Dart: “Years ago we didn’t have all the communication mediums we have now, and this has greatly influenced the way people shop for beauty brands. Magazines help to bring brands alive and the increasing growth of weekly titles has led to a greater celebrity culture, making it both more accessible and alluring.
“The likes of Twitter and Facebook have also helped to bring products and brands into the mainstream at a very quick pace. Consumers today are cash rich but time poor and the fact that they can be updated on the latest products, trends and campaigns at the touch of a button is very important now.”
She also explains that while during her time at Selfridges, television shopping channels such as QVC were frowned upon, now they have helped to ensure people from all backgrounds and income groups are aware of, and can access, prestige brands such as OPI, Elemis and Molton Brown.
The power of television
Dart explains: “QVC used to be a really dirty word if I’m completely honest but lots of key luxury brands actually started life on this channel and went on to have huge success. And now the power of television shopping just cannot be ignored and people are able to order professional products such as those from OPI without going to a department store or a salon. And because of the breadth of the television audience it means there is a big enough pie for everyone to feed from.
“Other retail formats, such as that offered by The Perfume Shop and previously Duty Free shopping, have presented big challenges to the traditional department stores and they will have lost business because of it.”
Dart comments that the reason the beauty landscape has changed so much is because much of the snobbery of previous years has been stripped away – Chanel was one of the first fragrances to be stocked at The Perfume Shop while 20 years ago you wouldn’t have seen prestige lines like Christian Dior and Estée Lauder sold at Boots. She adds: “Now it would be difficult to imagine Boots without its enormous beauty offer and it is currently the number one retailer of fragrance in the UK, with The Perfume Shop next in line, taking 25% of the market. Boots also spearheaded the trend for affordable skin care years ago with its launch of No7 Protect and Perfect, showing women that it was possible to look after their skin at an affordable price.”
Other new retail opportunities which she says have had influence include the rise of “at home parties” with brands such as Neal’s Yard Remedies entering this market in April last year and turning over £1m since then – a very lucrative sideline. Other areas Dart highlights are the emergence of more boutique beauty stores, following the example of Space NK who pioneered the concept, and of course the beauty websites and blogs with the latter singled out as having special influence on the purchasing habits of the huge number of people who follow them daily.
Department store dilemma
Due to all of these different factors, department stores have been forced to change their offer in order to compete and Dart remembers her own experience of this from her days at Selfridges.
“It became clear that things needed to change and when I was at Selfridges Vittorio Radice took over as ceo in 1996 and transformed the store. His vision encouraged the concept of outlandish theatre in retailing and he enabled the beauty hall to become a creative space which in turn was revitalised and became hugely successful,” she says.
“The in-store environment also became increasingly important and had to be eye-catching – the Crème de la Mer signature fish tanks which appeared behind their counters were a good example of this. People going into the beauty hall at Selfridges want a spectacle and they want theatre and it has become a place where they can experience that.”
Despite all these efforts, Dart predicts that the internet will erode the traditional retail outlet eventually. She says: “The world we live in is ever changing and the social networking tools that surround us are making this happen even more quickly. They are having an effect not only on consumers but on beauty products themselves and on the retail environment where they are sold. Department stores may come under even more threat and this may even lead to them shrinking their offer in order to survive.
“The past 30 years alone have shown what lengths consumers will go to in order to look good and manufacturers and retailers must keep up with this pace. If they are too slow to adapt, they will not survive.”