Catching the lucrative teenage fancy with sparkle, shimmer and shine

Drug Store News, August 14, 2000 by Liz Parks

NEW ORLEANS -- At the NACDS Marketplace conference, old news was new news as a proliferation of emerging and established teen and pre-teen brands dominated the cosmetic aisles. Once again, teens and preteens have cast their spell over marketers, attracted by the discretionary spending power of teen girls and their fondness for things new and fashionable.

According to a recent study by Teen Research Limited, teens spent or influenced their parents to spend more than $122 billion last year.

The Rand Youth Poll estimates that female teens alone spent $66 billion last year, including approximately $10.6 billion on health and beauty aid products; another $9.8 billion on foods and snacks; and $24.7 billion on clothing and jewelry.

And current teen research shows that many teens are handling at least some aspects of major household shopping these days, including trips to food, drug and mass merchandise stores.

Like many manufacturers, retailers recognize the value of the teen shopper, and companies as diverse as CVS, Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart, Eckerd, Rite Aid and Longs have gone out of their way to carry cosmetic brands targeted to teens and pre-teens. They also are grouping those brands in product adjacencies that make shopping easier and more fun, sometimes even creating teen centers as CVS and Longs have done.

On the manufacturer front, leading brands like Cover Girl and May-belline continue to court teens with electric new shade promotions, as well as with advertising campaigns featuring popular young singers, actresses and models.

Cover Girl's current introduction of its new three-in-one Triple Lipstick, for example, is being supported with television commercials featuring the British "super-group" Cleopatra.

Higher priced mass market cosmetic brands such as Revlon and L'Oreal court aspirational teens with their trendy and sophisticated shade promotions.

The major mass cosmetic brands target a wide demographic, expanding to include mature women as well as teens. To make a statement exclusively targeted to teens and pre-teens, mass market retailers rely on brands like Bonne Bell, Jane, Caboodles, Townley and Bon Bon's. In the last few years, retailers like CVS, Longs and even Walgreens--which has always been a little wary of the allegedly "fickle" and unpredictable teen and pre-teen market--have partnered with cosmetic manufacturers to create beauty care programs and planograms targeting teens and pre-teens. And at Marketplace this year, there were a lot of new collections for retailers to choose from.

Cosmetics as fashion

Lakewood, Ohio-based Bonne Bell was keeping its new products under wrap, not wanting to alert the competition, but has several new marketing initiatives planned for the third and fourth quarter. The company also is working with retail partners on joint marketing/merchandising programs targeting teens.

One of the strongest teen cosmetic launches of the year has been Bonne Bell's innovative Flip Gloss, a two-in-one lip gloss/lip balm that's packaged in brightly colored flip-top-to-open cases and retails for $3.50.

One of Bonne Bell's strategies is to market cosmetics as fashion accessories and to introduce shades inspired by color trends outside the traditional fashion world, treating color and cosmetic cases as accessories--similar to what Nokia does with its cell phones and Apple does with its iMacs.

According to POS data, the strategy is working. Bonne Bell's three-outlet eye color sales were up 54 percent for the year-to-date period ended in May, while the total category was only up 3.2 percent. The company's lip color sales were up 20.5 percent while the category itself was down 1 percent.

Makeup fetish

In one of its first major marketing initiatives since acquiring the bankrupt Renaissance Corp. in the summer of 1999, Boca Raton, Fla.-based New Dana Perfume Corp. introduced a dramatically revamped version of the teen brand Fetish.

The new Fetish will be relaunched in January as Fetish Christina Aquilera. In addition to licensing her name to New Dana, the popular teenage singer is also actively involved in developed new shades and new products. The collection is focused solely on color products for eyes, cheeks, nails and lips. There are no face makeups in the collection. Price points of $3 to $6 make Fetish Christina Aquilera a value-priced brand that should help ensure fast turns-- particularly if the singer's career continues to escalate.

To reach out to younger, pre-teen girls from ages 4 to about 11, New Dana also is re-launching its Tinkerbell collection with an assortment of playful new products. The new Tinkerbell collection ships this September.

Kits and Caboodles

Caboodles, a full color cosmetic line targeted to teens, pre-teens and 20-some-things, is gaining expanded distribution. The collection has been chainwide in Target for more than a year now and currently is being expanded to all Wal-Mart Canadian stores.

In Canada, it also is in all London Drugs, Shoppers Drug Mart, Pharma Plus, Jean Coutu and Zellar's discount stores.