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Top: L’Occitane’s Delicious Lip Gloss Trio; above: Regional Director Middle East & Africa Marc Mansour |
FRANCE. French beauty brand L’Occitane continues to expand in the travel retail channel, across all regions and distribution channels.
The company is preparing to open an office in Miami, to handle both domestic and travel retail business in the Americas. “It’s a necessary step,” noted Regional Director Middle East & Africa Marc Mansour. “We are doing well in the region and the business is now big enough to [warrant] this development.”
Within Mansour’s area, L’Occitane has recently opened up travel retail in Egypt. “We are now present within perfumeries, at Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh,” confirmed Mansour.
“In other news, in December/January we are scheduled to enter Bahrain Duty Free, via a two-metre back wall and personalised gondola.”
Within inflight, L’Occitane is already listed onboard 30-40 European carriers, and is performing strongly onboard Asian airlines. “Now we are starting to target US airlines,” commented Mansour. “Our European ferries business has also started to grow.”
He continued: “We have opened a lot of new accounts this year, so next year there will be more consolidation. We want to build on our existing doors, and keep on improving the quality of what we offer. We will work hard to refresh our range and adapt our assortment.”
L’Occitane has worked particularly hard to update and improve its travel retail exclusive kits – which are popular as gift purchases – in terms of new items and new packaging. It has also created a new Travel Collection logo.
“For example, the design of our popular Happy Hands kit is now much cleaner, and the ingredients more obvious,” noted Mansour. “Where possible we want to highlight our natural heritage.”
New sets scheduled to roll out in 2008 include the Delicious Lip Gloss Trio (three x 15ml glosses flavoured with cherry blossom, orange sorbet and sweet honey, respectively); the Men’s Essentials set – a new segment for the company, which previously did not offer kits for men; and a more compact Grape Travel Spa set.
Other novelties include L’Occitane’s Notre Flore fragrance collection, a quartet of edps (each 75ml) inspired by the unique scents of four areas of the Mediterranean. The fragrances featured are Myrtle, Iris, Cedar and Neroli.
“These are available now on domestic markets,” explained Mansour. “We will roll them out gradually in travel retail, on a client-by-client basis.”
MORE STORIES ON L’OCCITANE
Marc Mansour assumes new role at L’Occitane – 21/06/07
L’Occitane’s Garden blooms anew at Munich Airport – 21/06/07
