Retail stores are using more third-party companies to assist in sustaining and building their sales in today’s tough economic climate.  While budgets get cut and staff is reduced, sales can go into a tailspin as marketing efforts are reduced.  By hiring outside firms to bolster their scaled-back marketing teams, chains are finding great results with less investment.

Cosmetic Promotions, Inc. (CPI); a marketing and promotional company based in Winter Park, Florid,a is a prime example of such a company.  Working with the Beauty Category and Marketing Managers at chains such as Walgreens, Rite Aid, Winn Dixie, and Sears, they design and implement programs and specialty events that relieve the overworked marketing staff and bring in new sales for the chains.

At Walgreens, CPI handles their monthly Beauty Box program.  This program involves sending a monthly “red box” to every store’s Beauty Department. Walgreens has between one and six beauty advisors (BAs) in each of their 7000 stores – on average 3.2 BAs in each store.  The monthly box contains kits from the various beauty vendors such as Revlon, L’Oreal, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and Unilever. Inside each kit are marketing tools ranging from signs and customer samples to continuing education training. BAs are encouraged to read and use the materials by entering to win prizes if they send in a quiz postcard for each brand.  CPI grades the postcards and sends the prizes direct to the winners.

When Walgreens eliminated its Beauty Supervisor positions, CPI created a Red Book training program for the stores to help fill the gap. The Beauty Supervisors were responsible for arranging training seminars for their stores. Without this layer, training was becoming difficult to achieve.  The Red Book program provides a book on all the brands that are stocked in the department. Each BA who completes the 50-question Red Book Quiz receives a diploma. So far over 2000 diplomas have been sent out for 2009.

In May, CPI teamed with Coty Fragrances for a Mother’s day fragrance sampling event at 200 Walgreens stores.  More than 6,300 customers received a fragrance demo and 40,000 samples were distributed. In addition, over 750 pieces were sold that day.  Some 80% of the customers had never tried one or more of the fragrances, and 72% of the customers surveyed said they would purchase at a later time, which should result in future sales.

To attract more women to its stores this season, Sears launched its upscale cosmetic and fragrance presentations in 13 stores in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.  CPI assisted in their launch of full beauty departments by conducting makeovers for four brands: Yves Rocher, Iman, L’Oreal, and Maybelline.  Almost 800 makeovers were completed during the 2-day event, which resulted in over 1,000 pieces sold – an impressive 127% closure rate. The professional makeup artists helped consumers choose the right colors and products for them.  Some 77% of the customers had never tried Yves Rocher and 69% had never tried Iman before the event, providing massive exposure to these two exlusive brands.  L’Oreal had the highest sales, with almost 15 pieces per store during the event and 400 coupons distributed to stimulate future L’Oreal sales.  Each vendor had 8 hours of demonstration time in each of the 13 stores. Some 98% of those surveyed wanted more such free makeover events at the stores. A short video was produced of the event for Sears to use in their promotional materials. On December 5^th and 12^th, the same 13 stores will host a similar event featuring Iman, Rimmel, Milani and L’Oreal brands.

At Winn Dixie, Cosmetic Buyer Karen Lagarde engaged CPI to execute a special makeover/demonstration event in their top 25 stores – most in South Florida.  The stores had an event every Saturday during September and four vendors – L’Oreal, Procter & Gamble, Wet n’ Wild, and Pacific World – shared a professional makeup artist to entice consumers to sample beauty products while doing their food shopping.  Winn Dixie sent an email blast to their Customer Rewards Card members in these markets and had in-store signs publicizing the event in the weeks leading up to it.  More than 300 pieces were sold during the event.  To add value and excitement, CPI worked with six vendors to prepare a free beauty sample bag that was distributed during the event.  Winn Dixie is pleased with the sales lift and say they intends to replicate the event before the end of the year.

At Rite Aid, CPI assists their marketing team and beauty department with various community sampling programs. Their Glam Camp Teen Program has been very successful for more than 3 years.  Street teams hand out Glam Camp duffle bags filled with beauty samples at teen-oriented events such as concerts, beauty pagaents, cheerleading camps, and college campus events.  In addition, they bring the teens back to Rite Aid via their annual Back to School campaign, which involves a spread in Seventeen Magazine, Gift with Purchase program, Glam Camp web page, and in-store makeover event.  The Back to School makeovers were conducted at 200 top Rite Aid stores and featured professional makeovers or demonstrations on St Ives, Wet n Wild, Black Radiance, Veet and Clearasil products. More than 2200 pieces were sold during the event, over 3300 demonstrations performed and the website had over 32,000 hits during the August – October time period of the event.  Other sampling events target demographics such as African-American, Hispanic, and the new Men’s sampling program.

For more information on these and other events, contact Joann Tyson (joann@cosmeticpromotions.com or 888-644-9916)