Seasons and fashion drive sales of nail enamel shades

Drug Store News, Sept 8, 1997 by Liz Parks

Fashion drives sales of nail enamel. As the seasons change, women shift from buying the light, fanciful romantic shades of summer to the deeper, darker sultry shades of fall and winter.

From about Easter on through the summer months, the buyer for one large drug chain said, "citrusy nail colors" including those from L'Oreal, Maybelline, Orly and Sally Hansen have been selling very well. The Orly Wall Flowers collection of summer shades along with the L'Oreal Two to Tango collection and Maybelline's Miami Colors, did fabulously well, this source said.

The buyer for one chain with high-traffic stores said she was seeing particularly strong sales of the lighter shades up through August, but expects that to change "as soon as we start to see the weather turn colder." In this chain, Revlon's Street Wear, which has had a mixed reception in other parts of the country, was selling very well, particularly the lighter shades.

This buyer said all the shades in the 35-SKU Pure Ice collection were selling extremely well, which she partly attributed to how "great they look in their frosted bottles. They look exactly the same as the MAC nail polish, but they're much less expensive."

This buyer was also taken with how well the Pure Ice colors flowed together" on the wall. In contrast, she said, the "edgier" colors in the blues, greens and yellows look a little incongruous merchandised next to the more conservative shades from the larger nail care companies such as Revlon, L'Oreal and Sally Hansen.

All that glitters is hot

Moving into the late summer, the fall and continuing through the holidays, buyers and manufacturers predict that glitter and bronze shades will be hot, as will the green, copper and brown shades featured in collections such as Cover Girl's Spice It Up, L'Oreal's Be Bronze, which several buyers say was flying off the shelves in mid summer, Revlon's Gold Rush and Flip and Ish (also blowing out in mid-summer). Also expected to be hot are Orly's Colors of Safari, Revlon's Coffee Bar, Bonne Bell's metallics, and the "lifestyle" color shades in the Jane nail color collection, which includes pale metallics, rich reds, rich metallics, edgy, funky wild shades and neutral tones.

Judging just from the recent positive sell throughs of expanded palettes of French Manicures, that category segment can be expected to continue to do well throughout the rest of the year, and probably through the spring and summer.

Moving well beyond the traditional pale French Manicure shades, Del's Sally Hansen has a fall promotion called French Extreme. It features 12 colorful shades for French Manicures in four color families. Women will be able to choose light medium or dark tones in the blue, brown, red and purple color families. They can pair a powder blue tip with a navy blue nail shade or they can use the darker shades as the tips. The collection is designed to be fun and different, and the suggested retail is just $1.99.

L'Oreal has a similar promotion coming out this fall called French Twist. It features three-color infused French Manicures in three coordinated shades: mint, bleu and violette. Two buyers reported excellent sell-throughs with a similar French Manicure promotion from Orly called French Revolution. Their "alternative" French Manicures featured a lilac tip, a gold lame tip and a platinum tip.

Hot nail color sales predicted

The buyer for one large chain said that he expects nail color sales to go through the roof this fall, and to maximize his selling opportunities with the category, he plans to bring in "as many promotional collections as I can find space for.

"Nail color is not like the face makeup category or the mascara category, where a certain number of brands and. items do the bulk of the business," he said. "Nail color is an impulse category, and niche brands without a lot of dollars behind them do very well if they have the right shades, the right packaging and the right price points.

"Who ever heard of Pure Ice or Bon Bons before this year, yet they flew out of my stores. Orly's nail color has done so well, I've added it to my planogram. Revlon is the biggest brand name in color but until Color Flip they were not leading the color explosion. In fact, they were behind the trend and so was L'Oreal, and Cover Girl. We rode the first stage of the nail color explosion on the backs of mid- and smaller-sized brands such as Sally Hansen, Sinful, Orly, NutraNail, Pure Ice, Brucci, Wet `N' Wild and Loud Music. Maybelline got the big brands to pay more attention to this category when they launched Express Nail, which has been wonderful for the category."