By Nina Sovich
PARIS, May 10 (Reuters) – “Asian men are just crazy about
this,” purred the saleswoman, cradling one of her most popular
products in her palm.
It’s a Primrose Facial Cleansing Masque she sells in the
Aesop beauty shop on Paris’s Rue Saint Honor (c), costing 36 euros
($46.55) for 120 millilitres, enough to buy dozens of bars of
soap.
It “works wonders” for men in cities like Beijing, where the
air can be steamy and grimy in the summer, she says.
Boutiques like Aesop and big multinationals such as L’Oreal
, Estee Lauder and Unilever are finding
that men, especially Asian men, are increasingly willing to
shell out sizeable sums to take care of their skin.
Sales of men’s facial products still make up only a small
fraction of the $97 billion global skincare market, but it’s a
growing fraction, despite the economic slowdown. Last year,
skincare sales to men rose 17 percent to $2.4 billion, and 83
percent of that growth was in Asia.
“I was struck when I came to China by how uncomplicated and
‘no-taboo’ the attitude was,” said Alexis Perakis, L’Oreal’s
China manager.
“I want to feel good and look good and be groomed, so I use
products,” is the no-nonsense Chinese male approach, he says.
While much of the increased demand is from China, where men
buy mass-market brands like L’Oreal’s Garnier in supermarkets,
South Korea is driving sales of specialty products.
“South Korea is setting the trends for men’s grooming,” said
Nica Lewis, a retail analyst at Mintel International. “Asia
looks to the Korean boy bands, who are handsome, with great hair
and skin. Perfect teeth. Portraits of health and vitality.”
In South Korea, the largest market in the world for men’s
skincare, she said men were also starting to use BB cream, a
type of anti-blemish product with a light tint that crosses into
make-up territory.
In India, men are beginning to use skin whiteners, which
reduce the amount of melatonin in the skin, with L’Oreal’s
Garnier and Unilever’s Vaseline giving some local brands, long
used by Indian women, a run for their money.
Companies say European and American men, however, still
favour a more rugged look.
“Asian men strive to look refined and educated because a
professional appearance for work is important … The western
European man’s routine is primarily for himself, his wife and
his family,” said Jennifer Bremner, Unilever’s global director
for Dove Men+Care.
BIG BRANDS
Unilever launched its Dove men’s line in 2009 and has moved
into 40 countries. Bremner said it was important to develop
products specifically for men, such as the soap bar the company
says it refashioned to fit the different dimensions of men’s
hands.
Unilever is aiming for a broad market. Recent ads for the
Dove men’s line have shown U.S. basketball player Shaquille
O’Neal talking to his mother. After the trials of growing up
with an odd name, he says he is now “definitely comfortable in
my own skin”.
L’Oreal has also renewed its push into men’s products,
hiring actor and comedian Hugh Laurie as its frontman.
“He appeals to men and women,” said Arnaud Jeanteur, deputy
general manager of L’Oreal Paris.
If the popular 52-year-old Laurie is comfortable dabbing on
the products, it gives permission to others to follow.
To translate these efforts into sales at the beauty counter,
the companies have another hurdle to clear. Retailers say men in
the United States and Europe are still uncomfortable walking up
to a counter they associate with women’s products and buying an
expensive lotion or cream, even if it is marketed to them.
Brands like Australia-based Aesop try to overcome that
reticence by projecting a unisex image, with Scandinavian wood
accents, chanting monks on the sound system and white and black
bottles.
Online sites like the UK’s Mankind.co.uk can spare men’s
blushes altogether. The success of online sales helped the
European market for men’s skincare, the second largest in the
world behind Asia, manage slight growth in 2011, unlike other
European retail segments.
PROOF OF PURCHASE
“The market is increasingly sophisticated … and nowadays
men either have money or they don’t,” said Robert Johnston,
associate editor at GQ magazine. “The ones that do are willing
to spend it on themselves. But they want to look under the
bonnet. They want to know it works.”
“Men want proof,” agrees L’Oreal’s Jeanteur. “They need to
be convinced.”
A good dollop of marketing helps, too.
L’Oreal has branded an eye cream made by Biotherm Homme with
the action-man title High Recharge Eye Shot.
Estee Lauder borrows on the imagery of the science
laboratory and the doctor’s surgery with its Lab series and
Clinique men’s line, both in unfrilly black and white packaging.
It remains to be seen whether the dark arts of marketing
will tempt many men into the luxury cream market, where women
can spend 300 euros on a tiny pot that promises to take 10 years
off their face.
Family-owned French beauty company Sisley is banking on it
with its recently launched Sisleyum, a men’s face cream in a 50
ml jar priced at 150 euros.
That’s 15 euros per teaspoonful to your average Joe.
