Now Russian Yves Saint Laurent aficionados may purchase perfumes and cosmetics in the brand’s official online boutique, which was launched last month.
Four other mono-brand e-boutiques — Lancôme, Urban Decay, Kiehl’s and Clarisonic — have also been launched recently; another one for Armani will be online by the end of this year, Ekaterina Golovanova of L’Oréal Luxe said in an exchange with East-West Digital News.
Previously, these products were available online only via such retailers as Ile De Beauté, Rive Gauche and L’Etoile. “Supporting operations with these e-retail partners remains an important priority,” Golovanova said.
The company pursues in Russia the same strategy as in other countries, developing mono-brand e-boutiques and working with e-retail partners — excluding, though, pure players.
“The Group’s global ambition is to grow faster than the market,” Golovanova said.
Marketing and promotion strategy are supported in-house, as well as part of the boutique’s operations.
Orders are delivered within two days in Moscow and up to two weeks in other cities of the countries, in partnership with private shipping company SPSR.
Golovanova could not disclose the amount of investment required by the project. “It really depends on the business model (fulfillment or in-house) and on the cost of supporting the IT platform.”
Impact of the crisis
With 160 million small packages and parcels sent to online consumers in 2015 (up 10% from the previous year), Russia’s domestic online retail market still grew among the economic crisis in real terms, according to Data Insight estimates cited in EWDN’s latest industry report.
As far as physical goods were concerned, the market reached last year some 650 billion (+16%) in rubles. However, given the national currency’s sharp depreciation, market size fell to $10.5 billion in dollar terms (- 28% from 2014).
Cosmetics and perfumes were less in demand due to the crisis (along with such other categories as electronic devices and home appliances). According to a recent ranking, the largest online retailers in this field were Yves Rocher, with an estimated 1.79 billion rubles ($29 million) sales volume, and L’Etoile (1.57 billion rubles, or some $25 million at the average exchange rate in 2015).
