Covergirl Foundation as Compared to Fashion Fair
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ON a contempo rainy evening, Rose Estime, a 35-twelvemonth-erstwhile accountant who lives in Manhattan, left the Macy's Herald Square store with a small bag containing a cleanser by Fashion Fair that she was eager to try. Ms. Estime has been a loyal customer of the cosmetics line, which is meant for black women, for more than a decade. "Information technology matches my pare color, and I have itchy, sensitive pare and information technology helps me," she said. "They're the only products I can utilise without issues."
For many of the 38 years it has been in business, Style Fair, which is owned by the Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, filled the makeup bags of women of color — because, in office, there were and then few options. Just more recently brands including MAC, NARS and Bobbi Brown, all of which command significant counter space at Macy'due south and other department stores, have been siphoning away Style Fair's cadre demographic. In late September, Chanel introduced Perfection Lumière, a foundation line that includes twenty shades, including dark ones, available in the United States. Encompass Girl has its Queen Drove, represented by Queen Latifah; and niche lines like Iman Cosmetics and Black Opal have too built a loyal customer base.
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"Nosotros've been asleep," said Desirée Rogers, the chief executive of the Johnson Publishing Company and the former White House social secretary. "Some women refer to the brand as their grandmother's makeup, and we're working to change that."
As part of the division'due south makeover, Ms. Rogers and the brand's president, Clarisa Wilson, have appointed Sam Fine, 41, as creative director of Fashion Fair. Mr. Fine, a veteran makeup creative person, has painted the faces of Iman, Patti LaBelle, Vanessa Williams, and more recently, Mary J. Blige, Tyra Banks and Jennifer Hudson. "I started out with Mikki Taylor and Brooke Shields doing Essence and Cosmo covers," he said. "Just it wasn't until I really started dedicating my career to beautifying women of color that I found purpose, and really found a greater level of success, strangely enough."
Mr. Fine, however, has his work cut out for him. An breezy survey of younger African-American women showed that make sensation of Way Fair was faint at all-time. "One twenty-four hour period I was in Greenish Acres Mall in Queens and saw a Mode Fair promotion or something," said Danielle Byrd, 38, another shopper at Macy'southward, who works at David'south Bridal in Manhattan and said she uses Iman foundation and MAC lip gloss. "I didn't know they were however around," she added, "I was surprised."
"I honey the shine and their color choices. My lips are very pink, and it'south hard for me to observe stuff for my colour."
Natalie Pryor, 22, a senior majoring in advertising at Michigan State University, uses bareMinerals blush, lip color and eyeliner from Ulta. "I have heard of them and they have my attention, but I probably won't buy any until I get a chore," she said in a phone interview virtually Fashion Fair, calculation that "Equally a higher pupil, I cannot afford them right now." (In fact, at a list price of $17, a Fashion Fair blush is $2 cheaper than a comparable item by bareMinerals.)
Ms. Wilson said that she was working on re-educating the immature, plugged-in consumer well-nigh Fashion Fair, in particular trying to make the brand a presence backstage at fashion shows, where MAC and Maybelline, which has no special line for blackness women, have long dominated. "We are going to transition every touch signal within the Style Fair brand," Ms. Wilson said. "So you're going to feel information technology online, you're going to feel it in store, you're going to feel it with the personnel, our advertising, with our new products in color as well as pare intendance."
Merely Krissy Reed, who writes the makeup blog, Addicted to All Things Pretty, is unsure of the brand'south ability to evolve, though it introduced her to makeup as a teenager and she still wears their foundation. "Expecting Fashion Fair to have a strong online presence is similar expecting your grandmother to be more social on Facebook and Twitter," Ms. Reed, 28, wrote in a blog post. "I've ever felt that they conformed also much to the expectations of their customers and failed to grow within the beauty industry every bit a whole."
At least one promotional event has been successful, though. Fashion Fair partnered with Sony Pictures on a capsule makeup collection based on the pic "Jumping the Broom," starring Angela Bassett and Paula Patton. When the movie had its premiere on May half dozen, the makeup company sent an email blast to customers. Women'southward Wearable Daily reported that traffic on the visitor'due south Web site went upwardly 111 per centum, and the site's sales increased by 53 percent compared with the week earlier.
Merely the in-store experience, at least for now, is a different story. Over 650 stores across the United States and Canada, too as locations in London and Paris, carry Fashion Fair products, simply they are often sedate, if non deserted. At Macy'southward Herald Foursquare, at that place seemed to be a political party going on at the MAC counter, with club beats pounding over speakers. Elaine Welteroth, until recently the dazzler editor at Ebony, published by Fashion Fair's parent visitor, was hopeful that the glamorous Ms. Rogers, who she said had "generated some really good buzz around the brand," could plough things around, though she does run across hurdles. "I'g in a generation where MAC is the reigning brand for a lot of women, black, white and other," Ms. Welteroth said. "I retrieve that has put Fashion Fair in a precarious situation, where they really demand to rethink their strategy. They need to redefine what information technology means to be a black beauty company in this multifaceted market."
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