Sephora targets holiday season with new product launch
Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, has announced a new partnership with
Monopoly to launch a beauty based board game, targeting the
profitable holiday period.
The company has taken the original concept of the traditional Monopoly board game and given it a beauty twist by making the aim of the game to own the most successful Sephora store, filling it with cosmetic brands and in turn bankrupting your opponents.
As with the original board game, Sephora has maintained the roll of the dice and 'Advance to go' card element, but also incorporated a way of testing the players knowledge of 'beauty' and the products sold within Sephora stores, such as Cargo, Gosmile and Kinerase.
Incorporating the different cosmetic ranges retailed by Sephora aims to enhance brand awareness around the all-important holiday period, and encourages consumers to carry out their holiday season shopping in Sephora stores, with the ultimate goal of generating an increase in sales for the company.
The company launched the game this month, heavily marketing its gift potential, directly targeting the lucrative season. Sephora stated: 'It is every beauty enthusiasts new favorite and an ideal holiday gift for friends'.
Many cosmetic brands are following suit, marketing new packaging ideas to target Christmas gift buyers, with one recent product launch being a festive season box packaging for Nivea gift packs, from German cosmetics giants, Beiersdorf.
The companies are targeting a vast market, with the recently released 2006 annual holiday survey from leading consumer and retail information company, NPD Group showing a two per cent increase in intended fragrance sales for 2006, underlining the fact that traditional gifts are coming back into fashion.
The holiday period sees the highest rate of fragrance sales throughout the year, with The National Retail Federation predicting a 5 per cent increase in sales to $457.4 billion during November and December. However this figure is down on last year's increase, which was up 6.1 per cent from the previous year to $435.6 billion.
The launch of the board game comes at a successful time for Sephora, with the retailer gaining strong momentum around the world in 2005, in particular in France where LVMH said that it continued to grow market share. In the US, Sephora once again achieved double-digit revenue growth on a same store basis.
The company also said that Sephora, had continued to build strong momentum in Europe as well as in the US. Sephora is also expanding in China, where there are new additions planned to the current eight store count.
