by Gary Jones, BeautiControl Product Development
If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you know that every now and again, I have these moments where I feel like I have to purge…this is one of those topics. Although it doesn’t directly relate to a specific topic, I thought it was something that I would share.
I had a great “AH-HA!” moment last week. For the 16 years that I have worked at BeautiControl, I have seen so many changes…changes, not only in the product line, but in the fundamental philosophy of our business.
BeautiControl was established in the 80’s as a color cosmetic company, with a strong focus on color cosmetics and image. Our original founders, Jinger and Dick Heath, established this company and had the unique ability to take an overwhelming category of products and develop a unique form of customization that allowed every-day women to find the best beauty and image solutions available, and streamline them to fit their unique coloring and image personalities. Based on that level of customization, Image Consultants were created and we saw significant growth as a result of this philosophy.
In the 90’s, as the consumer’s focus shifted away from color cosmetics and toward the need for high powered skin care solutions, the corporate focus shifted toward customized skin care solutions based on the individual needs of a person’s skin type…dry, combination and oily. Based on this shift in consumer demands, a new strategy of product development was established to best fit the needs of a new breed of customers. Our selling situation, once called an “Image Party” was now called a “Clinic”, as the focus of the party shifted toward skin care, vs. image consultations.
This was when I joined the company. My mission was to take this new philosophy of product development and excel it into the future with a new kind of product that offered real solutions for our consumers skin care problems. As we re-vamped our R&D and manufacturing capabilities, BeautiControl was now prepared to tackle this industry head-on with products that met and exceeded this widely saturated industry and create a point of difference that caused consumers to see us as their skin care resource. Since then, skin care science has become the driving force that has propelled us into the future and has established us as a force to be reckoned with in the cosmetic skin care industry.
Although our “party” is now being referred to as a “Spa Escape”, the focus on skin care solutions has never been stronger. The Spa positioning offers today’s consumer a venue in which they can learn about their skin care solutions in a relaxing and pampering selling situation.
Several years ago, we took a hard look at our skin care category and made another shift in our developmental strategy to focus on the concept of skin age, rather than treating the conditions of dry, combination and oily skin types. Not only was this unique in the skin care industry, it became quite clear that it was the most logical solution for solving the skin care needs of all consumers. I had to ask myself the question, “why do people use skin care products?”. The answer being…to delay or reverse the signs of aging! SIMPLE! With that being understood, it became clear that we needed to make a shift again in the way that we developed our skin care products. We needed to invest serious time and research into creating skin care solutions from the ground up, based on what we needed the end result to be. Since our focus was to create age specific skin care solutions, we needed to research the physiological changes that occur to our bodies as we age. The skin and the human body is a very complex machine. As we age, our needs change so dramatically with each decade. I firmly believe that the only way to effectively fight the signs of aging is to treat your skin with the specific things that it needs as we get older. Its no longer about whether my skin is dry, combination or oily…now it is about how we are going to reverse and delay the significant changes that occur to our skin with each passing year. This is not only one of the things that sets us apart in this enormously competitive market, it is the thing that makes strengthens our reputation as skin care pioneers and leaders in the skin solution market.
Ok, so now you know the history of our product development philosophy in a nutshell; however that really doesn’t have much to do with my “AH-HA!” moment (sorry, I get a little side-tracked sometimes…thanks for joining me on a little trip through Gary Land). My “AH-HA!” moment came this past week as I attended a conference with many people from companies around the world. We were talking about the process of product development. This gave me the opportunity to ask a lot of questions and view the developmental cycle of many other skin care and cosmetic companies. The more I listened, the more I realized how different we are when it comes to product development. Where our product development process is a very dynamic and ever changing process (which in reality makes everyone inside the company crazy), it was obvious that these other companies had a very simple product development philosophy….find a competitive product, duplicate it, set your cost objective and meet it every time. EASY! Products were never late. Products always fell within the cost requirement. Everyone was happy! As a result, most competitive companies sacrifice or compromise innovation in order to make the process of development more simple, less expensive and “good enough” to meet the needs of their customer.
At that point, after years of feeling like I could never fully get our process to be an easy, perfect process, instead of feeling bad about it, I started realizing that this is something that I am very proud of. We are a product driven, technology based company. We don’t duplicate products on the market. We don’t mimic our competitors with our version of a similar formula and then put our own “spin” on it. We create innovation. We create solutions. We create problem solving products that are simply better than what we see on the market. As a company who develops skin care innovation from the ground up, it may never be an easy, perfect process. As a leader, rather than a follower, we are going to find ourselves wandering into sometimes uncharted territory and that is never “easy”. There will always be new technology that is emerging that will change the course of a product. There will always be new ingredients that as company that is quick to market, we will have long before other companies have even heard about them, or have had time to get them to market. We won’t use the cheapest ingredients….we will always use the best ingredients.
So, in all of that, I realized that I would rather be part of a chaotic and ever changing product development cycle (my apologies to anyone inside the company who may be reading this), than a company whose primary mission is to imitate the competition. I’ll take innovation over imitation any day!
Ok, enough of my rambling. Be sure to check back in on Friday…there is a new product coming this week that I know you are all anxiously looking forward to. I’ll tell you all about it in Friday’s blog.
Have a fantastic week!
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