Tell us about Anastasia Beverly Hills’ foray into the Indian market.
Anastasia Beverly Hills is one of the international brands that House of Beauty does distribution for. We also do distribution for four to five other brands in the skin care space. For makeup we have only Anastasia Beverly Hills, which is a very strong brand. The brand didn’t enter the Indian market through House of Beauty, it came to India in 2019 through Sephora in an exclusive partnership. Due to various reasons along with the pandemic-related issues including ones related to supply chain, the partnership couldn’t take off as planned. The brand couldn’t present itself in full glory at that point of time. House of Beauty took over the brand in 2021.
The brand felt that there is more potential in India than being present at Sephora, because of the way in which distribution networks are strengthening in the country and more retail players are entering the Indian market. That was the idea behind the brand to move to a distributor rather than being with a single retailer.
The journey has been astounding for us. In the first year we grew its business double. This financial year we have plans of doubling those numbers. The numbers look promising, there is a lot of momentum in the market. We feel that competition is very good. More international makeup brands are entering the Indian market, more conversations are happening and there are more options for the consumers to explore.
Brands have to put their best foot forward in terms of how they are being represented, the kind of inclusivity brought in for the Indian consumers. That way, ABH is loved and we want to grow its awareness steadily in a very strong way because the brand is here for the long haul.
How many brands does HOB represent? How is ABH different from the rest?
Currently, we have five brands. Juice Beauty which is a curated skin care brand from the USA. It is organic and farm-to-beauty; in the clean beauty space. Then we have Neal’s Yard Remedies from the UK, which is also a natural and organic skin care and well-being brand. With this brand we have a multi-category business – it has bath and body products, hair products, men’s range etc. with a premium luxury positioning. We have recently launched EcoTools, which is positioned in a sustainable space – something makeup tools don’t talk about much. It is well positioned in terms of pricing with a sustainable story to it. The other brand is Freeman, which is a masks-focused brand. And then we have Anastasia Beverly Hills, which is differentiated by the fact that it is a makeup brand.
From lipsticks and highlighters to foundations and concealers, tell us about ABH’s portfolio. What is the top-selling category?
ABH typically started with brow. The founder of the brand is Anastasia Soare who is known as the ‘Eyebrow Queen’ in the USA. She was the make-up artist of many Hollywood celebrities. Soare developed a technique for how to shape eyebrows according to people's bone structure and natural eyebrow shape and patented her balance technique of brow which is called Golden Ratio method. The focus was massively on brow because Soare believes that brow is the expression of your face – one can express all your moods and brow balances the entire face structure. The brand started only with brow products. I don’t think there is any brand in the world which has the number of brow products as ABH. We have about 26 to 30 products in the brow category. Hence it is the biggest category driver for the brand. Globally it drives about 50 pc of the brand’s business.
We have a very strong face category which has cult products and contributes about 30 to 35 pc. One of the biggest categories which we are known in the professional segment is our eye palettes, that gives us a very substantial business. Brow and eyes combined accounts for 48 to 50 pc of the business. We are growing a lot in lip colours and lip glosses which contributes to 14 to 15 pc of the business.
One of the biggest aspects of ABH (this applies globally as well) as a portfolio is inclusivity. The kind of shades/ranges we have is tested on all kinds of skin tones. When we are buying for our country, we are trying to cover the range that works for our country.
What is the offline presence of the brand? What is the sales split between online and offline?
Offline is the major segment of our business. ABH is basically more of a distribution brand. Around the globe, India is the only country where they have an exclusive retail boutique. We have two of them (in Bombay and Delhi) and one kiosk concept (in Delhi). The reason why we wanted to open stores is, we feel that the entire personality of a brand comes out when you have a retail space wholly dedicated for the brand. That’s the only reason why we are establishing a few brand outlets where you can talk about the brand holistically. In these two stores, we have a special signature brow service which is again very unique to ABH stores. You need that kind of space for a brand to narrate the complete product which is not possible in a multi-brand outlet.
We are present in selected Nykaa stores, Sephora, Tira – where we have our exclusive brow service. This is the first time we are having an exclusive partnership in terms of the brow bar outside our stores.
Around 25 pc of the sales come from online and rest is from offline. In the premium space, online is still a niche category.
ABH is available online on Nykaa, Tata Cliq Luxe, Tira and more. Which are the highest contributing online marketplaces?
Nykaa.
What are the offline expansion plans?
Our exclusive outlets are primarily a brand face for us. The beauty retail outlets have a substantial contribution. We have expansion plans with SS beauty, Tira, Sephora. Sephora is a strong partnership for us as it is one of the leading beauty retailers in India. Since we have a strong partnership with Tira, they will have ABH’s brow bars in the places they are expanding to with outlets.
All said and done, the way the premium beauty consumer is growing is not directly proportional to the way premium beauty brands are coming to India. For ABH, the offline expansion is curated so that we don’t want to cannibalise our sales. We don’t want to be with two-three retailers in the same space.
Who is the primary TG for ABH? What explains the choice of ambassador?
Malaika Arora’s choice is very much based on what the brand is all about. Though every brand has its definition of TG based on the age group, persona and so on, ABH wouldn’t want to define the TG so specifically. I would say any person who wants to express themselves in the best possible way, with products that are good for the skin and allows easy usage, they are our customers. We are gender and age inclusive. The choice of Arora comes from the same place. She represents the fact that age is just a number. She is a multifaceted woman who is doing multiple things and is not defined by a said age bracket in the entertainment industry. She is aspirational and hence we believe that Arora’s persona matches ABH.
With Malaika Arora on board now, will you be embarking on advertising campaigns? What will be the media channels used?
Not really. ABH is a very digital-first brand. It is always on digital, social and strong CRM and activation-based. It is more to do with one-on-one interaction with the customers. Digital and social accounts for around 70 pc of the marketing spends.
Before on-boarding Arora, how was the brand represented and marketed in India?
The reason we wanted to get an Indian face was to make it more relatable to audiences. Before that, a lot of marketing was driven towards influencer collaboration with like-minded artists. We focused strongly on the makeup artist universe because ABH as a brand is loved by professionals. We had curated activations for the makeup artist community. We did multiple master classes through renowned makeup artists in the first year. We also had multiple influencer collaborations, faces that could resonate with small diaspora regionally. We also received visibility through our partners. Now, we are going to do some ATL activities.
