The company has launched a range of 23 products, which it claims fills a gap in the market for a male product range equivalent in scope to a woman’s prestige line.
Amongst these products is a 4-step skin care system comprising four color-coded collections corresponding to different skin types, and the routine takes less than 4 minutes to complete.
When it comes to persuading men to embrace a multi-step routine, company founder Mark Bruggeman is confident, saying: “We believe men will adopt a four step system when they realize the distinct benefits.”
According to OM4, educating its target audience about the importance of skincare and embracing a daily skin conditioning program will be accomplished mainly through women – the primary purchasers of men’s skin care.
“As far as education, women who buy for men must be armed with the facts and data to help them convert men to the system. We spend considerable time educating our spa retail partners and arming them with information to sell to both their male and female clients,” Bruggeman told CosmeticsDesign.com USA.
Women primary purchasers of men’s skin care
As market research conducted by the company revealed women to be the primary purchasers of men’s grooming products, the company designed its packaging to attract both sexes.
“We ran logo, branding, color, container packaging and other choices by both test groups and in a market survey of 10,600 organic and natural consumers from our database. The response was 9.7 percent and their feedback shaped our decisions,” explained Bruggeman.
He said that the bottles were selected based on the ergonomic feel in a man’s hand, with the aesthetics designed to appeal to both men and women.
The suede bottles and deep brown packaging are masculine and appealing to men, and the varnished logo repeat pattern suggests prestige, said Bruggeman, adding that the market research revealed women had first to be enticed into picking up the box before buying.
Organic appeals to women
The fact the range is organic (OM4 benchmarks against Whole Foods Premium Standards) also strikes a chord with women, Bruggeman noted.
“As far as organics are concerned, the jury is still out when it comes to men. However, our primary purchaser, women, like organics,” he said.
When survey respondents were asked to force rank a variety of factors ‘Organics’ came in at number one. Although Bruggeman noted that the results are ‘undoubtedly skewed’ as the respondents were predominantly users of organic products, he said there is still a significant female organic consumer group.