Fenty Beauty’s Growth Strategy: What You Need to Know

Many celebrities have their own product lines but few change an entire industry. Fenty Beauty made the case for inclusivity and won. While it would be easy to attribute the success of Fenty Beauty just to Rihanna’s star power or her focus on inclusivity, there are other parts of Fenty Beauty’s strategy that contributed to the brand’s disruption of the beauty industry. How does a beauty brand generate 500 million euros in sales in its first year? Just ask Rihanna. But in case Rihanna won’t get back to you here are three things she did differently to keep customers coming back for more.

1. A world class partnership. What you may not know is that Fenty Beauty was created in collaboration with LVMH’s Kendo Beauty division. Kendo was created in 2008 as an incubator by LVMH as a way to create brands that could be sold in LVMH owned Sephora. Kendo has a significant amount of autonomy and the people working there often have start-up experience creating a risk profile among employees that is different than what exists in most companies. This strategy has been successful for LVMH as evidenced by other popular brands owned by Kendo including Kat Von D, OLEHENRIKSEN and BITE Beauty. Landing such a coveted partnership allowed Rihanna to pair her marketing savvy with deep talent in the beauty industry. Additionally, partnering with LVMH gave Fenty Beauty global distribution that was hard to match, through Sephora, one of the largest beauty retailers in the world.

Although Rihanna could have stepped into the beauty arena on her own like Kylie Jenner did when she launched Kylie Cosmetics online Rihanna decided to start by entering into a lucrative partnership with LVMH. Partnering with LVMH has many benefits. One of which is having access to all of the sales data from beauty juggernaut Sephora as well as other LVMH beauty brands to make key decisions including which product lines to launch first. Sephora also provided Fenty with great merchandising and product placement in-store and online.

Working with LVMH also gave Fenty Beauty the infrastructure necessary to launch a brand on a global basis almost instantly. Fenty Beauty launched in 2017 in 17 countries all at once, at 1,620 stores (exclusive to Sephora in the United States and exclusive to Harvey Nichols in the UK) a rather unprecedented move that likely would have been more difficult or impossible to execute without the LVMH partnership. LVMH called the launch of Fenty Beauty: “the first-ever global beauty launch in history.”

Even with online shopping, beauty is still a category that consumers like to purchase in-store as it is easier to see if products match which was especially important for the first product launched under Fenty Beauty, which was foundation. In addition to focusing on inclusivity one of Rihanna’s best moves was choosing the right partner and deciding to launch offline and online at the same time.

2. Inclusivity. Fenty Beauty was named Time magazine’s Best Invention of 2017. Speaking about the brand Time magazine said: "Fenty’s unabashed celebration of inclusivity in their makeup campaigns put an unprecedented spotlight on the need for diverse beauty products." As many people know, Fenty Beauty launched with 40 shades of foundation. But Fenty Beauty was not the first brand to offer 40+ shades of foundation. For example, Make Up For Ever even stated, in an Instagram post after the launch of Fenty Beauty: “40 shades is nothing new to us.” The bigger question is how did Rihanna manage to disrupt when others failed to barely innovate?

Other beauty brands with a diverse range of shades did not make marketing themselves as a brand serving all as a central part of their business model. Rihanna, from the beginning wanted to serve everyone. Not just dark-skinned consumers but everyone. Speaking about her line of foundation Rihanna said: “there needs to be something for a dark-skinned girl; there needs to be something for a really pale girl; there needs to be something in-between." One key difference is in how Rihanna marketed Fenty Beauty which Time magazine noted as being part of the genius behind the success of the brand. Fenty Beauty uses models from many ethnicities allowing the brand to become known as “the new generation of beauty.” Rihanna focused on all women and now all women can’t stop buying her products.

3. High quality products. Simply put, Fenty Beauty produced a higher quality product than its competitors. Back in 2014 when no one was looking, Rihanna registered the trademark for Fenty Beauty. Then Rihanna spent over two years to create the right formulations before the product dropped. Speaking about Fenty Beauty Rihanna said that she “wanted it to be right” and “never wanted it to be a rushed project.” “I always wanted it to be something that was respected and if I feel like I’m not there yet, I’m not even gonna make an attempt.” Speaking about Fenty Beauty, a customer named Shavonne Fagan said: "before Fenty came out there were only three foundations I could find that matched my skin and only one that got my undertone right." "It's terribly frustrating. One girl started to cry in the Sephora when the person put the foundation on her skin and it matched."

Forbes estimates Fenty Beauty is now worth a conservative estimate of $2.8 billion and Rihanna owns 49.99% while LVMH owns 50.01%.

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Sources

https://contentwriters.com/blog/5-lessons-marketers-can-learn-from-rihannas-fenty-beauty/

https://go.octoly.com/insights-brands/fenty-beauty

https://www.lvmh.com/houses/perfumes-cosmetics/fenty-beauty-by-rihanna/

https://www.retaildive.com/news/rihanna-joins-luxury-group-lvmh-with-fenty-launch/554630/