NEW YORK — Estée Lauder has reached into the past to create what it bills as its most advanced repair product to date: Advanced Night Repair Concentrate Recovery Boosting Treatment.
The new product builds on Lauder’s venerable Night Repair franchise, which hit the market in 1982 with a serum designed to work with the skin’s circadian rhythms and natural repair processes. The franchise was redeveloped in 1990 with the most up-to-date ingredients available at the time, and has been tweaked as innovations have been discovered.
“As science evolves, we make sure that our skin care science also evolves,” said Joseph Gubernick, chief marketing officer for the Lauder brand. Gubernick, formerly senior vice president of corporate product development for the Estée Lauder Cos., was part of the team that designed the original Night Repair franchise. Gubernick also had a hand in creating several of the Lauder Cos.’ iconic skin care products, including Estée Lauder’s Fruition and Clinique’s Turnaround Cream. “Consumers today are facing significant challenges to their skin — and DNA damage is resulting. This product is a critical step in helping to prevent and repair that damage.”
The new concentrate, which is designed to complement to an existing skin care regime, is intended to address significant skin stressors — environmental pollutants, abrasive dermatological processes and harsh climates — in a targeted manner. “These stressors can contribute to and accelerate the damage that leads to visible aging, such as fine lines and wrinkles,” said Daniel Maes, vice president of global research and development for Estée Lauder.
And Thia Breen, the brand’s president, Americas, said she believes the treatment will result in significant additional business for the Advanced Night Repair business. “It’s not replacing an existing product,” she said. “It is adding another layer to the treatment. This is a concentrated repair product, to be used for a specific time, then stopped.”
The new treatment is, in effect, “the emergency solution for when all else fails,” said Maes. It is designed to be used for 21 days straight in conjunction with other skin care efforts, and then stopped. If the product is used to soothe a cosmetic procedure such as microdermabrasion or chemical peels, it should be used for one week before and two weeks after the procedure, said Annie Carullo, senior vice president of global product innovation. The intention is to “reboot” the skin, added Carullo. Consumers can then use the product quarterly to maintain gains.
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Advanced Night Repair Concentrate Recovery Boosting Treatment features three proprietary blends of ingredients, Maes explained. A concentrated nighttime recovery and repair complex includes a yeast ferment called bifidus as well as bifiderm+ and RNA fragments, which are designed to repair skin during sleep. A grouping of concentrated anti-irritants is intended to create a “recovery room” for skin; this blend includes amento-flavone, an anti-irritant, and humulus lupulus and grapeseed extracts, said to soothe surface redness and irritation. Finally, a concentrated barrier-repair complex that includes linoleic acid, cholesterol, wheat bran, olive extracts and hyaluronic acid is designed to help restore the skin’s compromised barrier and seal in moisture.
“This product is like the reset button on a computer,” Maes said. “This product takes on free radicals immediately, and the product continues to work for many hours after application — which is very important, because skin irritation peaks 10 hours after exposure.” It is intended to increase skin clarity and luminosity, he added.
Advanced Night Repair Concentrate Recovery Boosting Treatment, which will retail for $85 for 1 oz., will enter stores in September. It will be available in Lauder’s full distribution, approximately 2,100 department and specialty store doors in the U.S. Packaging is similar to the iconic brown-glass Advanced Night Repair bottle, although “we intensified the color, since this is an intensive treatment,” said Marjorie Lau, vice president of marketing, North America, for
Estée Lauder. The brand plans TV advertising later this year, added Thia Breen, the brand’s North American president.
National advertising, featuring Carolyn Murphy, breaks in October fashion, beauty and lifestyle magazines, said Lau. The company also plans an Internet campaign beginning later this month that is designed to raise awareness of the product.
While Lauder executives would not discuss projected sales or advertising spending, industry sources estimated that the treatment could do $10 million to $12 million in its first year on counter, and that about $5 million will be spent on advertising and promotion.