FROM SHELLIE KARABELL | FORBES | http://bit.ly/2geOuj6

Life, Liberty And The Pursuit Of Beauty: #L'Oréal Paris Brings #Diversity To The Runway

Paris Fashion Week is a time when couturiers spare no expense to strut their stuff in front of a select audience, sparing no expense. Chanel this year set off rockets in Grand Palais; Dior took over the Rodin Museum gardens. All for 15 minutes of high level, high-priced high fashion, available to the general public only on TV or You Tube videos or in their dreams. This year, L’Oréal Paris presented another take on that theme — mounting a 20-minute "defile" (fashion show) for the public and in public, featuring a 60-meter (nearly 200-feet) runway down the middle of the most famous avenue in Paris, 70 “looks” by 18-different designers. More similarities: loud music, lights and giant video screens, beautiful clothes, beautiful models male and female wearing beautiful makeup (including silver lipstick).

Kind of like France’s July 14 Bastille Day parade, but without the tanks and soldiers. You had to admire the logistics, planning, timing and security even if fashion wasn’t your thing. And the brand’s makeup and hairstyling products held up under the wind and drizzling rain, which managed to seep under the arched covering.

There was a certain irony in the fact that the 600 invited guests were seated on one side of the wide runway and several thousand members of the public were standing on the other side looking in. And there were even bigger and more significant differences from your run-of-the-mill high fashion show, aiming this show at real people: instead of row after row of rail-thin models, the show by L’Oréal Paris was sprinkled with some real-sized, even over-sized women, not to mention a few famous L’Oréal Paris "faces,” such as actresses Helen Mirren and Jane Fonda. And instead of having to wait six months before finding runway fashions in the shops, you could just walk right over to French department stores Printemps or Galleries Lafayette and buy what you just saw, if you had a mind to. Or you could learn the secrets of what went into what you just saw on the runway by taking a master class at one of the four booths set up adjacent to the venue. Oh, and the venue: the Champs Elysees, closed to traffic as part of the city’s no-cars Sunday experiment. It’s hard to beat the Arc de Triomphe as a background, rockets or no rockets.

“This is part of our brand mission — to portray diversity, to open up the best in beauty to everyone,” Pierre-Emmanuel Angeloglou, President of L’Oreal Paris, told me in an interview in his office for this blog. He pretty much does that already: L’Oréal Paris (one of the L’Oréal Group’s 32 brands) already sells 50 products a second, according to company statistics. Those are the skin care, hair care, and makeup — for men and women — you see under the L’Oreal brand in the drug store and supermarket. But don’t let that placement fool you: L’Oréal Paris has been the official make-up and hair artist for the Cannes Film Festival for the past 20 years. And in addition to L’Oréal Paris, the parent company L’Oréal Group owns perfume, hair care (consumer and professional) makeup and skin care brands such as Lancôme, The Body Shop, Kerastase, Maybelline, SkinCeuticals, and Ralph Lauren and YSL perfumes. L’Oreal Group is the biggest beauty company in the world, selling more than one billion products a year.

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CEW CONFERENCE | OCTOBER 10^th | COSMETIC AND DIGITALIZATION

I invite you to participate at the conference organized by the CEW under the theme: "Digitalization: why does the cosmetic distribution well get out its pin of the game?" With in presentation the results of the barometer cross channel of Promise Consulting / Panel on the web.

I will have the pleasure to speak before the members and members invited of the CEW. The conference will be followed by a debate in the form of questions and answers.

All welcome!

When? October 10^th, 2017 from 6PM until 8:30 PM

Where? At the Oddo bank at Madeleine (Paris 9^th)

Register here

The CEW is the 1^st international network of the professionals of the beauty. Today, it gathers 8000 members grouped in three associations: CEW US, CEW UK and CEW France. Created in the United States in 1954, the Cosmetic Executive Women became the CEW and it welcomes from now on all the professionals of the sector.

FROM LAURENT THOMAS | @CNBC | http://cnb.cx/2y0xqEb

#EBay partners with #fashion #marketplace #Spring in growing rivalry with #Amazon, #Wal-Mart

As Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target work faster than ever to beef up their e-commerce operations, one of America's earlier internet marketplaces has fallen off some shoppers' radars. But don't count eBay out of the race to the top.

The company is partnering with Spring, a New York-based fashion e-retailer, to bring hundreds of big-name accessories and apparel brands to ebay.com. Shoppers will now be able to browse the looks of David Yurman, Rag & Bone, Mango and Chloe on eBay's website, the same site that lets customers bid on toys, power tools and motorcycles. Like its retail rival Amazon, eBay's in the business of everything.

EBay's latest move shows the e-retailer is still trying to grow its online marketplace and shed from its image any perception of poor quality or too much hassle. Today, more than 80 percent of merchandise sold on eBay is new, and nearly 90 percent of items bought on the website are purchased without a bidding component.

It also reflects a bigger shift in the industry. "The Spring and eBay partnership is evidence of a growing trend in which retailers are partnering — instead of competing — with other retailers," Jill Ramsey, vice president of merchandising at eBay, said.

"With Spring, we can bring even more coveted merchandise to our buyers, making it easier than ever to discover their own version of perfect."

The Spring storefront on eBay's website will function like a boutique, the companies explained, where shoppers should be pleased to find more of their favorite brands in one place. At least that's the goal, as consumers today are faced with more options of places, both online and offline, to ring up purchases.

It's not the exclusivity factor that sets Spring apart from other retailers or online players — Coach and Michael Kors, for example, can be purchased via many outlets. Spring, though, has managed to curate an assortment of hundreds of fashion-forward brands, all within one site, and now it hopes to bring that same concept to eBay, making the internet marketplace a "dedicated destination" for women looking for Bobbi Brown makeup or a pair of Tory Burch sandals.

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FROM JEZ FRAMPTON | CITYA.M. | http://bit.ly/2vR6bLF

#Build a brand for #millennials : The new challenge

 A brand is the most important asset a business can have. It is the only true, long term differentiator of a company, and without doubt it helps businesses change and grow. But although business owners know this is true, most are still neglecting the one thing that makes a successful brand: people. Brands start and finish with people. They begin on the inside, with humans, and are ultimately delivered on the outside, to humans. People are the pillars of a company that breathe life into businesses.

Brands are not a tangible product – they are a human construct brought together by opinions, perspectives and experiences. These experiences are made up of interactions with the product, a company’s culture, its impact on the wider environment, and how it communicates. Each of these factors makes up a brand. And every touchpoint for a consumer or employee matters. It is only when these experiences are fully aligned with clear values and purpose that a brand can live to its full potential.

People form opinions of companies in the same way that they form opinions of other people: it is an informed, emotional choice as to whether they like and trust you. Your company needs to have clear values and a meaningful purpose to allow people to make these decisions.

This is even more crucial when aiming to get millennials engaged with your brand. Some might be tired of hearing about millennials’ needs, and the fact that they are more concerned with a business’ ethos and vision than their parents were. But this is the generation that companies must aspire to.

This unique generation has found its voice and is not scared to use it. Look at the recent General Election, for example. Theresa May thought she was safe, but the millennials roared and swayed the result. They weren’t prepared to stand for something they didn’t believe in.

Millennials want purpose, clarity and authenticity, and these are the qualities that must be instilled into a brand’s ethos if you want this and future generations to consider buying into your products. Millennials are the people that will champion your brand’s purpose – if you give them one.

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FROM PAMELA N. DANZIGER | FORBES | http://bit.ly/2gZkH16