Barbara Menarguez takes on top US fragrance and beauty post at Chanel

Following close to 20 years working in finance with the company, Barbara Menarguez recently accepted a new opportunity to lead Chanel’s US beauty business. Menarguez is currently senior vice president and chief financial officer at Chanel, a role she’s held for nearly 8 years. She’ll take on her new responsibilities at the start of February.  

The executive vice president of US fragrance and beauty position was left vacant when Julien Gommichon left in December of 2016. He’d held the spot for 8 years.

N^o​5​

The Chanel beauty and fragrance product portfolio is extensive. Just the brand’s iconic N^o​5 comes in several varieties of fragrance, a hair mist, body oil, body lotion, foaming bath, cleansing cream, body cream, powder, bar soap, and boxed sets of select N^o​5 SKUs.

The full portfolio comprises an array of fragrances and scented product, color cosmetics, and skin care.

Managing this business will be a change for Menarguez, who most recently oversaw the company’s tax department, accounts payable, the accounting department, payroll, and the like.  

N^o​1​

Calling fragrance and beauty an “important category for Chanel,”​ the business publication Luxury Daily attributes the success of the Chanel beauty brand to the company’s Brand Intimacy Quotient, as scored by the branding consultancy MBLM.

That agency’s 2015 Brand Intimacy Report found that “Chanel was the top most intimate brand in the industry.”​ Following Chanel, the leading beauty brands were:Clinique, bareMinerals, Estée Lauder, Olay, MAC, Dove, Lancôme, L’Oréal, and Bobbi Brown.

Beauty as an industry came in at number 3 in the report rankings. And Mario Natarelli, MBLM’s managing partner, suggests that where a beauty brand ranks is perhaps more significant than in other industries: “Consumers are much more discerning with products they apply to their bodies and this is understandably so,”​ he says in a press release about the latest MBLM findings.