PEOPLE . PARIS-17E-ARRONDISSEMENT . 14.03.16
THE HOLISTIC APPROACH TO
CLARINS
WRITTEN BY:
Imogen Hope
Maybe it is Claire Catherine-Mercier’s more unusual route into the beauty
industry that has shaped her holistic approach to her role at Clarins which sees her
combine architectural design with merchandising.
With a background teaching French and Latin at a school in France she still
remains passionate about education, arranging trainings all year around for those
looking to enter the industry. The method of storytelling which she once used in the
classroom is now used to convey the Clarins message and ethos.
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All of the products are made in France, which Clarins proudly represents this fact
with the use of the colours red, white and gold. The environment is a key word for the
brand’s image, they are conscientious about protecting plants by making sure they only
buy land where it does not damage the Eco system. Furthermore, each year Clarins
makes large financial donations to medical research, women and children’s charities.
It is not surprising that the hugely talented Claire has been involved in so many
prestigious projects and was the winner of the highly coverted Comité Colbert prize for
Hermés. MiND Magazine was interested to hear that these are busy times for Clarins,
this year 2016 is based on laboratory research of Clarins products and the results of this
will only be noticed in 2017.
Could you tell our readers about your role within Clarins?
CLAIRE CATHERINE-MERCIER: My role is very simple, I am in charge of brand
visualisation which means architecture and merchandising. It is about staging the whole
brand, the products and the beauty advisors. This applies to all the retail environments
which means it can go from high end boutique to a simple, small perfumery owned by
one person in a small city. It can really be any kind of distribution, which is amazing
because Clarins has probably around 30,000 distribution stores around the world, from
tiny stores to huge ones. I am in charge of organising the staging of the brand and the
products, set up, maintenance, change and activation. It is probably one of the most
challenging parts of my job, to get the brand coherence and local markets needs
respected and accurate. This goes through working with all other brand departments.
What would you say are the main interests of your job role?
CLAIRE CATHERINE-MERCIER: One of the main interests of the job is being among the
last ones to activate the brand. This means we take and stage everything that the other
departments have imagined or created for the brand. Therefore, we work very closely
with marketing management and trade marketing and brand eventing management in
order to put together events and how to tell the brand’s story. We work with
communication departments and studios because we apply their communication
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directions to the stores. Of course, we use visuals, videos, all the assets and materials
about launch assortments and the brand’s image. We work very closely with the CRM
(Customer Relationship Management) and training, because they interact with the
people inside the brand or the people outside the brand. And one of their priorities is
of course the point of sale. On the other side of the job we work daily with the regions
and the markets to make sure the way we implement the brand image is also in line
with each specific local retail and cultural reality.
“We implement the brand image…”
How do you combine the store’s architecture to compliment the
merchandise? What is your strategy?
CLAIRE CATHERINE-MERCIER: For many brands the difficulty is coordinating and
harmonising architecture and merchandising to make it relevant. Typically for many
brands this is a big issue. There are many approaches my colleagues in other brands
take, however my approach is very simple. I purposely merge the two fields of
architecture and merchandising together, which means everyone has projects that they
work on each week and my approach is not by field of competencies but by projects.
We take a holistic approach to the needs of renovation and openings. Even for
perfumeries where the work involves much more merchandising, I still get my
architects involved for the technical part. I am organising trainings all year around to
make sure the architects and designers understand the commercial aspect of their job
and that the commercial people understand the impact/design/visual harmony of their
job. But indeed it’s an everyday process, a real challenge, even inside the brand it’s a
challenge to get people to really acknowledge the dualities of the job.
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Clarins store in Neuilly-sur-Seine in Paris
How do you find that emotional connection with the customers?
CLAIRE CATHERINE-MERCIER: Sometimes we don’t find it and I am pretty sure if you go
around the world to the Clarins stores you will find many places where there is not
enough emotional connection. However, the new way to approach merchandising is to
engage customers in an emotional link. To impact the customer, we must create a
direct and immediate emotion, impress, surprise, move…, and then favour a long
lasting relation. Many brands start by triggering or by surprising. Somehow Clarins
started the other way around. Clarins is a 61 year old company, which started with an
amazing founder, Jacques Courtin, whose goal was to really please and listen to his
clientele. Clarins has built on that. I would say for the deeply emotional part Clarins has
already this in its genes and has always had a very intimate relationship with the
customers and listening to them. Clarins was one of the first companies to create CRM.
We have incredible products, beautiful brands, an amazing story and more than
anything a profound connection and engagement with our customers: we have the
hidden part of the iceberg. Now it’s time to emphasize that, to show our joy and
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capacity to surprise, and therefore to get closer to even more customers, so they also
will benefit from the amazing proximity, authenticity and quality of Clarins.
How did Jacques Courtin understand the needs of his customers? And how
did Jacques fulfil those needs?
CLAIRE CATHERINE-MERCIER: For years Jacques Courtin refused to sell the products he
was making for his Institutes, because he said if I do that I won’t know what the
customer thinks. He agreed to sell it but inside the bag he put in a questionnaire for the
customers to fill in and to tell him what they thought of it. It was extremely successful.
It allowed Clarins to be incredibly innovative, which we still are, with real proven
results, as well as to perfectly answer the needs of the customers. The various
application methods that come from Jacques Courtin are also an asset and still unique
around the world. Touching customers physically as well as emotionally has been the
founding of the brand. Creating an intimate link by giving a personalised diagnosis and
a long term skincare recommendation, is inherent within the Clarins attitude and habit.
I would say that even in the world’s smallest perfumery you will probably find someone
telling you about a product exclusively made for you, not because it has to be sold by
numbers but because it is right for you. I would say that our philosophy and strong
regard for beauty are highly sought after by a lot of brands.
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What you would say Clarins, as a brand, weakest point is?
CLAIRE CATHERINE-MERCIER: What we really lack today is showing the visible part of
the iceberg at high speed. We have the hidden part sussed and we have not been
paying as much attention to that visible part especially in terms of merchandising. For
the last three years we have started to rebuild a design that would really express the
brand, express the brand’s intimacy, convey the French chic, and subtly tell the
customers about the history of Clarins. We are stepping up again in order to create
more surprise, more fun, and more storytelling at the store level, as well as a clearer
display of the products. Everything that we have been keeping for ourselves so far. That
is the way of creating it.
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How do you represent the brand through your role within the brand?
CLAIRE CATHERINE-MERCIER: Well the first approach we had to was to convey that the
brand had been created in Paris, France and in an extremely elegant, French way. We
represented that and enhanced it through the brand’s colours of white, red and gold.
When I arrived we decided to really convey this intimate and very specific demeanour
that Clarins had. There was still a lot to do on signage and explaining the brand. This is
what we are doing now, putting much more emphasis on signage, and expressing more
about the brand’s philosophy. In skincare we have roughly 260 products available, and
we have much more in terms of catalogue, which is triple of what our competitors
have. Now we have travel retail and big perfumeries where you don’t have much time
or where you will not have a personalized diagnosis, so you need to better understand
the assortment by yourself. Of course among the 30,000 stores it is still a work in
progress.
“The brand’s colours of white, red and gold”
How do you convey what Clarins stands for to the clientele?
CLAIRE CATHERINE-MERCIER: The key to this is storytelling and engagement. We should
talk about the brand’s huge stories and the amazing number of stories that have not
yet been told to the customers. Beautiful humanitarian actions that are kept secret,
only known amongst families which has not been divulged. Our awareness of climate
change, plants, and animal protection that nobody talks about; so many financial
donations given to women and children, and given to medical research; there are a lot
of things we should express about the brand. All of our products are made in France,
we are conscientious about protecting plants and we make sure to buy land where it
does not damage the eco system. It is now our job to start conveying this, telling people
and making it visible, it is now in progress. We also aim to bring design to more
modernity now, that is the next step, and to propose more and more personal
experiences in store.
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How important is it to create an environment within the store? Do you
think online shopping has affected the way customers shop?
CLAIRE CATHERINE-MERCIER: Environment is key. For emotional content, we have a
research department that goes into understanding our customer base. What ethnicities
we have in the world; how it is different in Asia, Africa, Europe, Americas…; exploring
everything to make sure we can gain precise knowledge of our consumers. Of course
we all know how to shop online. People will only leave their homes if there is an
experience worth living in store. They don’t leave to get the product you can buy
online, to get the product information you can see online, nor is it about the price or
convenience, it is the experience, not only emotionally but holistically, this is what we
are moving towards. Again the beauty of Clarins is that we have the customer in our
DNA, this feeling of I know you and want to get to know you better. We have to convey
that more easily and efficiently, to engage in a deep way with every customer. The
older generation is fine with not needing so much excitement because we have built a
relationship that is going to last for a lifetime. The younger generation seeks fun first,
particularly in a more varied way, the relationship then is to be built. It is important to
have a well-rounded experience, for those who just want a quick fix, those who know
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what they want and for those that want to go in with their friends and try it on, for
those who love to be pampered, and those who are shy…, before they even go further.
How do you manage to link Clarins to online shopping and social media?
CLAIRE CATHERINE-MERCIER: The emotion has to exist online and of course has to be
conveyed offline, and translated offline. The offline has to feed the online and vice
versa. It is a huge job and one of the challenges is the smaller and newer brands are
naïve of this reality, so they spontaneously go for the offline and online, and very often
for the online first and the offline last. Which of course it not the same for big brands
like us which have already established a lot offline. We have to progress from the
opposite perspective and still be agile, astute, convincing, sexy. Clarins website has
been awarded one of the best by the customers and the whole brand is working on
making the offline reflect the online agility, and the online reflect the offline proximity.
“We have to progress from the opposite
perspective and still be sexy”
Could you tell the readers about your most successful projects?
CLAIRE CATHERINE-MERCIER: I would say wining the Comité Colbert prize for Hermés
some time ago was a great achievement for me. Another was designing for The Empire
Hotel and Spa, a six star resort, in Brunei in South East Asia, where I used to live. It was
a 20000m2 spa and a major ballroom project. It was hard work but a huge
achievement. In 2006, among many other projects I worked on La Rinascente in Italy on
the Guerlain counter. It wasn’t easy but was quite an achievement. Another was doing
Make Up Forever’s first boutique in Le Marais, Paris, in 2011. At the same time we were
redoing the professional boutique and also Dany Sanz’ laboratory rue de la Boétie. Of
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course, I have to mention Clarin’s spa in Neuilly in 2014, and a lot of other Clarins
projects around the world.
One of Claire’s favourite projects, Make Up For Ever in Paris
Could you give us a little insight into what we should expect next from
Clarins?
CLAIRE CATHERINE-MERCIER: There is a lot coming up, 2016 is going to be a lab year
based on research: it will be a very busy year. There is a lot coming up in terms of
design and focusing on the customer’s experience, making the 360 degree towards the
experiential.
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