Anne Delleur, Arcancil

Premium Beauty News - At the time when FSI Régions and Oséo acquired a stake in your company, you had set ambitious development goals for Arcancil Paris. What is the situation like today?

Anne Delleur - Our goal to strengthen Arcancil Paris at all levels, particularly by reinforcing its distribution in France and by doubling its export turnover in three years time is coming true. Our sales have jumped by 60% between April 2012 and April 2013. In France, we have doubled the number of our shops over 2012 and we have also doubled our sales force. We have opened new markets abroad, like Hong Kong, Cambodia or Kazakhstan, and we are in the launch phase in Korea, Indonesia and China.

Throughout our small company, we manage to achieve a controlled growth rate in France and abroad.

Premium Beauty News - Your performance in France is particularly impressive in a mature, very complex and highly competitive market environment.

Anne Delleur - Our growth in France (+30%), in France is one of our greatest sources of satisfaction. We owe it to the expertise of our teams, to rigorous product developments and the importance we place on the quality of services granted to our relationship with our distributors.

As part of our partnership with French retail chain Beauty Success, we have opened 50 outlets in 5 months time. We also concluded an agreement with Beauty Success for the training of their sales personnel to enable them to gain a better understanding of make-up.

As with all our clients, we also insist on logistics to minimize our distributors’ stocks. This implies, in particular, anticipating launches of new products to avoid returns.

We rely on these assets to continually strengthen ourselves in France. Arcancil Paris has also entered Leclerc Group’s “Une heure pour soi” perfumery chain stores.

Premium Beauty News - How does the Arcancil Paris brand manage to find its place in a selective network where large chain stores rely heavily on their own brands?

Anne Delleur - Unquestionably, private labels or brands with networks of their own like Kiko, have changed the landscape of the French market. Only the best brands have managed to come unscathed. Arcancil Paris was among those thanks to its strong points: Eyes and price accessibility.

To take the example of our partnership with Beauty Success, we are treated like a differentiating brand, in parallel with the own brand of the store. Our offerings are complementary: Our strong point is the eyes, with over 60% of our catalogue addressing this segment, which has been in the brand’s DNA since 1935. Moreover, we work together on our launch plan to generate incremental growth.

Premium Beauty News - What are your priorities in terms of international development?

Anne Delleur - After our successful come back to Europe, South America and the Middle East, our main priority now is Asia, which has become Arcancil Paris’ growth driver with ranges dedicated to the eyes, complexion and lips, developed specifically for these markets, following the regional customisation strategy we successfully optimized for our ranges in the Middle East from 2010.

Premium Beauty News - Your third growth driver is digital?

Anne Delleur - This is one of the pillars of our communication strategy, we spend on it over 40% of our communication budget in 2013. We have completely redesigned the visual and editorial identity of our e-commerce web site www.arcancil.com, available in six languages (Chinese, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and soon in Arabic) to embody the Parisian chic. This new breath of life is inspiring a new corporate image, with trendier and more sensual visuals. We are also present on social networks and we develop make-up tutorials with an international focus.

During the redesign of our e-commerce website, particular attention has been paid to highlighting products on the site: HD photos, choices of colours, opinions of online users, products composition, link to social networks. Every effort has been made to provide comprehensive and transparent information to consumers of the brand and in order to create a real Arcancil Paris community.

The hosts of events organized with the famous make-up Artist Morgane Hilgers, our brand ambassador for the past two years, will be relayed on the website and on social networks.