抛弃比伯低龄粉丝，伊丽莎白•雅顿移情高端市场

    伊丽莎白•雅顿公司（Elizabeth Arden ）发现，一味追求大众化市场和名人效应，非但没能如愿盈利，还把公司拖进了死胡同。

    伊丽莎白•雅顿化妆品公司总部位于纽约，前些年曾推出泰勒•斯威夫特和贾斯汀•比伯等名人香水。但这家公司为了降低每年4,000万-5,000万美元的管理费用，计划重组业务。作为重组行动的一部分，这家周二宣布裁撤冗员，放弃某些不盈利的业务和香水授权协议。

    几年前，伊丽莎白•雅顿公司开始野心勃勃地进军名人香水市场——推出小甜甜布兰妮、泰勒•斯威夫特和贾斯汀•比伯系列香水——试图与科蒂集团（Coty）竞争。经过几年努力，伊丽莎白•雅顿公司发现利用大众化市场渠道营销的策略使公司很容易受到低端市场影响：几年前，一家大众市场零售商大批量减少了订单，致使伊丽莎白•雅顿公司的销售业绩出现大幅下滑。【虽然它没有披露这家零售商的名称，但华尔街分析师猜测是沃尔玛百货（Wal-Mart Stores）】。

    有鉴于此，伊丽莎白•雅顿公司决意削减开支，放弃某些典型的低价名人和设计师授权品牌（目前还没有确定具体是哪些项目）把营销重点放在复兴高端同名品牌上，同时更加专注在公司新进的海外市场推广旗下的名品。五月份，它指示高盛银行家们为它寻找潜在的买家，还宣布了一个“业绩改进计划”，希望经历了业绩平平的几年之后，能够通过这些努力再次站稳脚跟。（去年，这家公司不得不多次下调业绩预期。）

    伊丽莎白•雅顿公司仍然需要解决另一个难题。近年来它一直主攻香水市场，而其它化妆品公司【如雅诗•兰黛（Estee Lauder）等】则不惜花费百万美元，用于研制品质更好的护肤品，这才是发展最快的美容行业。

    晨星公司（Morningstar）分析师艾琳•拉什的研究领域覆盖整个美容行业，并不是专门研究伊丽莎白•雅顿公司。她评价说：“香水市场的竞争一直非常激烈，而且鱼龙混杂。与此同时，护肤品行业一直是化妆品公司的投资重点。”（财富中文网）

    译者：Joseph

    Elizabeth Arden RDEN -3.14% is discovering that chasing the mass market and celebrities can lead to a cul-de-sac rather than to riches.

    The New York-based beauty company, which makes fragrances for stars such as Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber, on Tuesday said it was cutting jobs, and planning to drop some unprofitable businesses and fragrance license agreements as part of a restructuring effort aimed at lowering its overhead costs by $40 million to $50 million annually.

    A few years ago, Elizabeth Arden got aggressive in the celebrity fragrance market—its roster now includes fragrances by Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, and Justin Bieber—in an attempt to go toe-to-toe with Coty COTY -1.24% . It also has found itself very exposed to the lower-end market after years of pushing into the mass market channel: a couple of years ago, it got dinged when a mass market retailer dramatically cut back on orders. (It didn’t say which one, but Wall Street analysts surmised it was Wal-Mart Stores WMT 0.24% .)

    And so now it is trying to retrench, dropping some celebrity and designer licenses (it didn’t say which), which are typically lower-priced items, and putting more emphasis on reviving its higher-end namesake brand, along with a more concerted effort to push its prestige products, particularly overseas where Arden has been a latecomer. In May, about the time it instructed its Goldman Sachs bankers to potentially look for buyers, Elizabeth Arden announced its “Performance Improvement Plan,” aimed it helping its get back on its feet after a few years of middling sales. (It has repeatedly had to revise forecasts downward in the past year.)

    Another big problem for Elizabeth Arden is that it is very exposed to fragrance at a time companies like Estee Lauder EL -0.41% are pumping millions into research to develop better skin care products, the fastest growing area of the beauty industry.

    “In fragrance, there’s been a lot of competition, and it tends to be more discretionary. At the same time, skin care has been getting a lot of investment from beauty companies,” said Morningstar analyst Erin Lash, who covers the beauty industry, though not Elizabeth Arden specifically.