Q: You write, "Beauty emerges as an industry which was easy to enter, but hard to succeed at. A: It does not take a great deal of capital nor technological expertise to launch an entrepreneurial venture in many beauty products—although for such a venture to have any hope of success, high levels of imagination and creativity have always been required. If you have a concept for a new brand, and the necessary finance, there are contract manufacturers and perfumers that will provide a product for you.
This is also an industry subject to sudden shifts in fashion and fads, which disrupt incumbent positions and provide opportunities for new entrants. Brand loyalties are often weak, especially for "fun" products like lip and eye cosmetics, although less so for foundation, because it is more expensive and needs to be a good match with skin tone.
Achieving sustainable success in the beauty industry is another matter. It is fiercely competitive, with thousands of product launches each year.
Even the largest, most professionally managed global companies find it hard to predict the success of product launches, and can stumble badly. One estimate is that 90 percent of new fragrance launches fail.
Getting the word out to consumers, and getting product through the distribution channels to consumers, provide further major challenges for new ventures. Creative talent, astute marketing skills, and the ability to understand and respond rapidly to consumer fashions and preferences are all needed to succeed.
There are fortunes to be made by building a successful new brand, but it takes an enormous amount of work and good luck to succeed. Q: You artfully portray a vivid, passionate cast of entrepreneurs. Which do you consider the most influential? Do you have favorites? A: The book emphasizes the role of individual entrepreneurs in building this industry. They varied enormously in their backgrounds and characters, but most shared a passion for the beauty industry, combined with an ability to understand the societal values and artistic trends of their eras, and to translate them into brands.
He went on to transform it. Assuming an adapted version of his mother's maiden name as he strove to create a brand that symbolized style and elegance, he got his first order by smashing a bottle of his perfume on the floor of a prominent Parisian department store, in a successful gambit to get customers to smell it. He created two entirely new classes of perfume, soft sweet floral and chypre, and was the first perfumer to sell his wares in elegantly designed glass bottles, rather than in the pharmaceutical bottles used previously.
An ambitious believer in globalization, he even sent his energetic mother-in-law to open up the American market in The American business proved so successful that its U. Coty was a larger than life character, but he was hardly alone in this industry in that respect.
The cast of influential and colorful characters includes Madam C. Walker, the daughter of former slaves in Louisiana who developed a system for straightening African-American hair, which was so successful that she ranks as among the first American self-made female millionaires. And then there was the ever-feuding Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, who transformed beauty salons from places considered the moral equivalent of brothels to palaces of opulence and style. And in our own time, Luiz Seabra stands out as the founder of Brazil's biggest beauty company, Natura, which is dedicated to environmental sustainability with a broad social vision.
Q: How much does the industry influence our notions of beauty, and how much do accepted or popular notions of beauty influence product development? A: The human desire to attract reflects basic biological motivations. Every human society from at least the ancient Egyptians onwards has used beauty products and artifacts to enhance attractiveness.
However, beauty ideals have always varied enormously over time and between societies. The book shows that as the modern industry emerged in the 19th century, it facilitated a worldwide homogenization of beauty ideals. Beauty became associated with Western countries, and white people, and with women. These assumptions reflected wider societal trends. Western societies as a whole underwent growing gender differences in clothing and work. And this was the age of Western imperialism.
At the same time, the influence of other cultures began to increase and the aesthetics of beauty changed and the use of cosmetics declined. The spread of Christianity with its denunciations of pride and vanity coupled with a changing ideal of modesty, also impacted the standards of beauty.
While cosmetics did not totally fall out of favor, their use seems to have been greatly reduced and their use largely restricted to courtesans, actresses, the wealthy, and assorted "loose" women. However, during the Renaissance high born women including Queen Elizabeth, used them to whiten their faces into an ideal of pale perfection.
Over time, cosmetics moved a little closer to more common usage. But, it really wasn't until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, despite the strictures of Victorian morality, that cosmetics and other beauty aids became more generally accepted. The Roaring Twenties and glamorous movie stars of the 's finally brought cosmetics into the mass merchandise market, where they were sold in department stores and other venues.
It was about this time that some of the best known brand names - many of which are still sold today - entered the picture, and the modern cosmetics industry was born. There have been many people and brands that have left their on the history of the cosmetics and skin care industry. Here are just a few of the early notable brands and people in the history of the modern cosmetics industry:.
Instead, women painted their faces, necks and chests with a lead and vinegar mixture known as ceruse. Elizabeth I of England, with her white face and large forehead the lead in ceruse would often cause hair to fall out , is quite representative of this look, which was popular for centuries.
And though women today might like to joke about how they suffer for beauty, women who used the lead-based ceruse often ended up with muscle paralysis or in their graves. At the dawn of the 20th century though, products that we'd recognize today -- lipsticks, mascaras and nail polishes -- began to emerge. On the next page, we'll examine the birth of the modern-day makeup industry.
Sign up for our Newsletter! Because it is in human nature to always strive to perfection and new ways to express ourselves, cosmetic played a really big role in our advancements from ancient civilization to the modern way of life. Cosmetics helped us change the way we look, fixed out bodies in time of sickness and enabled us to express our religion and beliefs.
All that started some 12 thousand years ago when Ancient Egyptians discovered healing abilities of scented oils. From that point, their cosmetic industry rose higher and higher to the point when it became important part of their religion.
Gods were honored by entire population with large use of cosmetics, almost everyone used oils, eyeliners, and similar products to enhance their look. Even though some of their ingredients were poisonous, allure of cosmetic did not lessen. However, when cosmetics found their way outside from Egypt, there reached resistance in Greece and Rome.
There cosmetic reached broad popularity, but it was viewed as extravagant and unneeded by many. In Rome, there was a period when women were not considered beautiful if they did not wear cosmetics.
0コメント