Sampling and added value: the insight from students of the École Centrale in Paris

The Department of Industrial Engineering of Central Paris, headed by Jean-Paul Bocquet and his assistant Julie Le Cardinal, had until now relied mostly on large industrial partners. The formalizing of a partnership with the BeautyFull Club in June 2011 has given the opportunity to several students from ’Central Paris’ to conduct an applied research with an outstanding industry whose selective cosmetic brands are world renowned and with packaging manufacturers who are leaders in their field.

Four 3rd year students, Audrey Quesnet, Damien Verdaguer, Florian Richetta and Jeremy Clement handed back a study entitled "Re-inventing the cosmetic sampling, a tool of experiences and to win new customers".

Everyone knows sampling is an important issue for cosmetic brands, both for perfumes, skincare and make-up products. Unavoidable purchase vector, the sample in selective cosmetics relays the brand’s codes. It is consumers preferred medium and is often considered a prerequisite for many clients.

Students from Centrale Paris have thus defined the scope of the project, analysed the available data, elaborated several ideas focusing on the challenges and then finally developed three solutions.

These three alternatives were presented in detail to the audience:

–  As part of a launch, creation of a website for the sampling campaign.
–  An automatic sample distributor that could both answer consumer expectations and meet the brand’s universe.
–  Tracking of samples to measure the effectiveness of the sampling campaigns

The students used several methods they were taught at Central Paris, FAST (Function Analysis System Technique) and RID (Radical Innovation Design). They took the time to set up innovation and creativity workshops, and to meet such experts as Charles Gounod and Emmanuelle Hermandesse from Rexam Personal Care, Ludovic Anceau from Bioplan Brugière and Philippe de Brugière from L’Occitane en Provence. These companies granted them access to their production sites.

Creation of a start-up!

It was not planned at first, but this study initiated by the BeautyFull Club, gave the students the idea to create their start-up, www.simplesample.fr whose business model consists in accompanying cosmetic brands and selective distribution in the optimization of their sampling campaigns. All unanimously agreed to say, it was a great satisfaction to see a research project materialize into a business start-up.