It’s loved by women across the globe and sold more than 50 million bottles since its launch in 1989 – and now ’s Red Door fragrance is back and better than ever. beautydirectory sits down with Elizabeth Arden general manager Natalie Sella to discover why they chose to relaunch rather than develop a new fragrance and the future of the brand.
Can you give us some insight into the future of the Elizabeth Arden brand?
It’s really about contemporising the brand and reconnecting with our core target market. Even though we’re a brand that’s 100 years old and steeped in a very rich heritage, we want to be known as a modern contemporary brand and we want to be a staple part of consumers’ beauty regime. We don’t want to be seen as a brand that your aunty or mum used but you wouldn’t. It’s all about making Elizabeth Arden products purse proud. We want consumers to be pulling out their bronzer or their Red Door fragrance and be openly proud in using our product.”
What was the inspiration behind the relaunch of Red Door?
Red Door is our number one fragrance. It was really about re-positioning Red Door and bringing it back into line with the prestige positioning of the Elizabeth Arden brand. Certainly here in Australia, Red Door had probably disconnected with where we see Elizabeth Arden as a brand, particularly in department stores. It was launched in 1989 at a price point of almost $128 and then the distribution and the pricing changed over the years and it disconnected a little bit from the Elizabeth Arden brand and its prestige nature.”
What’s different this time around?
It’s still the same classic juice. We kept the juice the same because it tested really well in blind testing with consumers as still being relevant for the modern woman. We look at it to say, if it ain’t broken, then why fix it?” It was also important to keep the same classic juice because we know we’ve got a really loyal base of customers and people really identify with Red Door the fragrance. It’s really easily identifiable. This time it’s a completely new luxe bottle and it really plays up the iconic red door of our red door spas.
It has a new price point as well, moving to a more prestige price. In the last three or four years, 100ml would have cost around $20 on average, it’s now moved to 100ml for $95 and it’s only available in department stores on Elizabeth Arden counters – so we’ve completely changed our distribution strategy.”
Why did you decide to invest in relaunching Red Door rather than developing a new product?
For us it was really about nurturing our iconic pillars. A lot of [the fragrance business] is driven by ‘new’ but we’ve got our number one fragrance, which has sold over 50 million bottles since it launched in 1989 and it’s been a winning formula for us – so we really didn’t want to change it.”
Who do you think will be the main consumers of the Red Door fragrance?
We’ve obviously got an existing base of really loyal users who love the fragrance itself and love the brand, we’re positive that we’ll continue to attain a lot of those users. There are a lot of lapsed users, not just of Red Door but users of Elizabeth Arden. So for us it’s going to be about reconnecting with those lapsed users and the other group of consumers will be about new consumers who haven’t used the Elizabeth Arden brand or Red Door before.”
Do you have a specific target audience in mind?
Our main target is women 30 to 35 plus as a general target, but we see the biggest opportunities with new users to the brand and then lapsed users.”
In terms of lapsed users, why do the lapses occur?
The cosmetics and beauty industries are really fast-paced, highly innovative and it’s all about connecting with the consumer and keeping them into the brand. There are a lot of consumers out there that are aware of Elizabeth Arden, they know the brand, they may have used it at one point, but they’ve opted out. A lot of that has got to do with the level of innovation that occurs across the category as a whole, but you have to make sure you’re connecting with customers and are building some really key crown jewels in your pillars of business.”
Are you hoping the Red Door fragrance helps people discover more about other Elizabeth Arden products?
That’s exactly right. It’s what we call leveraging the halo effect on the brand. The important thing with relaunching Red Door this season, is we’re investing a significant amount of money in the brand both in terms of in-store activity but also in our marketing campaign. We’re running TV, print, advertorial and editorial with key partners. What that does is that it will have an overall rub effect in terms of brand awareness on Elizabeth Arden as a whole, not just Red Door. That’s going to be a key platform to reconnect with those customers who haven’t used Elizabeth Arden for a while, get them thinking about it, get them into store, get them to counter, just getting them to look at Elizabeth Arden and put it into their purchase consideration process as a brand that [they think] Yeah, I’ll try it” and they’ll discover that it’s a great quality brand. This is just the start of a long-term re-positioning of the brand.”