NEW YORK — To get mass market beauty sales revved up, marketers are looking for innovations. Retailers said they have seen more new products this year alone than in the past five years. Many hope these items will bring shoppers who have strayed to outlets such as Sephora or even direct marketing back to mass market doors .
Mega-firms such as Revlon are working on entire launches, such as Vital Radiance, while small firms must find products that are so unusual that retailers can’t resist.
That’s been the philosophy of Grant Berry, creator of Styli-Style, a small company that hit upon success with pencils that don’t duplicate what retailers can procure from major suppliers.
The latest from Styli-Style is a long-lasting liquid liner in carbon black. Carbon black has been used abroad in liners, but this is its debut in the U.S. Carbon black, composed of finer particles than the traditional black dyes used in most cosmetics, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last October. Berry was able to quickly become the first manufacturer to bring it to market domestically because of his knowledge of international trends.
Called Liquid Liner 24, the felt-tipped pen system will bow this month in chains CVS, Brooks-Eckerd, Rite Aid, Ulta and Duane Reade.
According to Berry, carbon black’s tiny particles allow easy application. “This will help even those afraid to use a liquid liner because they don’t have a steady hand, to do it with ease,” said Berry. Older liners had to be dipped into the dye. With carbon black, the color flows to the tip on its own.
Berry said the pencil also has 24-hour staying power. Liquid Liner 24 is available in blackest black, black and soft black. The suggested retail is $6.50.
Liquid Liner 24 will be offered in a special promotional display and can be incorporated into existing wall fixtures. It was designed to fit into Styli-Style’s cube display used in chains such as CVS.
Women appear to show no signs of abandoning pencils. According to ACNielsen, sales of pencils and eye liners rose from $208 million last year to $224 million for the 52-week period ended Sept. 13, 2005.
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Although there are numerous pencils to choose from major companies Max Factor and L’Oreal, Styli-Style has carved out a niche with unusual products such as this new carbon black entry and the Flat Pencil, the industry’s first pencil with a flat head. Berry said the principles behind carbon black technology could eventually be used in other products, too.
While major players are fighting it out on the peg wall for space, Berry has been garnering attention with promotional displays. He’d like to gain wall space, but he’s also content with the volume he’s been building. More than 7,000 displays of Liquid Liner 24 are shipping, and during the year, Styli-Style moved more than 40,000 promotions through major retailers. Among the other new items from Styli-Style this year was Simply the Best, a makeup remover with skin care benefits.
Berry is as unconventional in merchandising as in product development. While he said finding wall space is a nagging problem for retailers, he thinks the crux of the matter is that there are too few testers in the self-serve environment.
“A great majority of consumers will not purchase a new color without testing it first, and this is often why they prefer different retail environments to purchase cosmetics, like Sephora or specialty retailers who have been quite successful of late. It is important to note that they all have testers available to the consumer,” he said.
He recommends putting an extra person in the store to maintain testers, even if it means manufacturers foot the cost. Berry thinks manufacturers would have greater sales with fewer returns.
“Currently, if a consumer wants to test a color, she has to open a new product, and in the process will either break the manufacturing seal or just damage the product, and I am pretty sure that she could not feel good about this in the process. As soon as this product is noticed by store personnel, it gets removed and returned to the manufacturer, who then incurs an additional handling cost from the retailer,” explained Berry
Whether his ideas convert other manufacturers or not, Berry said he’s content to grow with his unusual items. “It is my goal to revolutionize cosmetics and provide women with innovative products that break industry standards year after year,” he concluded.