Targeting Greater Global Sales, Shiseido Launches Clé de Peau Beauté in Russia

Shiseido announced sales of its high-end beauty line Clé de Peau Beauté have commenced in Russia. The products are being sold through Shiseido Russia (a 100% subsidiary of Shiseido based in Moscow) at high-end department stores in Moscow as of November 21. Shiseido has been focusing on the sales promotion of Clé de Peau Beauté as one of its “global mega-brands” and is using this extension into Russia as a way to foster sales of the brand in Europe under its next three-year plan (for fiscal 2014 to fiscal 2016), in addition to existing sales in Asia and North America.

Shiseido offers the whole range of Clé de Peau Beauté products, including skin care and makeup products, available at TSUM, a Moscow department. With the start of sales in Russia, the number of countries and regions where Clé de Peau Beauté are sold will reach 12, including Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, the U.S. and Canada. Also in Russia, as in other regions, Shiseido will establish a special Clé de Peau Beauté counter separately from the counter for the global Shiseido brand. At this specialized counter, beauty consultants will serve customers in a uniform that is different from the uniform worn by general Shiseido beauty consultants, part of an aim to provide Russian Clé de Peau Beauté with a distinct experience.

In Shiseido’s current three-year plan (for the period from April 2011 to March 2014), the brands the company is focusing on to ensure further growth are regarded as “global mega-brands,” and Clé de Peau Beauté has been deemed as one of Shiseido’s top-priority brands in the prestige market, together with the global Shiseido brand and Bare Minerals. Shiseido aims to become a “global player representing Asia with its origins in Japan” by 2017, and to this end renewed the Clé de Peau Beauté brand in line with its global strategy in 2011.

In light of the fact that most of the beauty markets in developed countries have matured, Shiseido has found it important to enhance its sales promotion measures in emerging economies and to develop products that will drive the next growth phases of the company. Among emerging economies, Russia represents a country strongly influenced by the European beauty culture, as well as Japan’s. Accordingly, Shiseido regards Russia as a top priority market in its three-year plan. Shiseido entered the Russian market through a distributor in 1999 and has been implementing more flexible measures through its 100% subsidiary Shiseido Russia since 2008. In the country, as in other countries in Europe, Shiseido has been implementing a strategy that focuses on the local prestige market, but in 2011 also began importing its Tusbaki-branded hair care products from Japan for local sale as one of a series of new initiatives to be implemented for the development of its business in the country.

In 2011, Shiseido renovated the Clé de Peau Beauté brand to develop it into its mainstay brand next to the global Shiseido-branded cosmetics, and accordingly established an independent business unit for Clé de Peau Beauté to control the global marketing of the products as well as a research institute for the brand. Shiseido will further foster recognition of the brand to double the overseas sales ratio by fiscal 2017, by focusing on Asia and the U.S. as global strategic markets.

 

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