The Hindu Business Line:
Recession doesn’t worry direct selling company Oriflame. For one, it helps more people come into the direct selling business and second, cosmetics sales also rise as people like to pamper themselves, says Jesper Martinsson, Chief Operating Offi cer, Oriflame Cosmetics.
With over one lakh consultants and a plan to triple the sales in the next five years, the Swedish company has set its focus on India. Martinsson tells BrandLine that the growing middle class in the country is exciting and the company is planning to reach consumers in smaller towns besides the bigger towns and cities. The North-East is already seeing a quick growth. Oriflame has to now work out a distribution model that can tackle the economics of the large expanse that’s India.
At times of economic slowdown, how is the cosmetics industry doing?
The cosmetics market is growing, but we (Oriflame) are growing six-seven times faster than the market. So, we are clearly gaining the market share.
Can you put a figure to that?
No. We don’t talk about individual markets. But if we are talking about the Asia region, we are growing at over forty per cent. We are present in six markets in Asia, and India is one of the biggest and also the fastest growing markets for us.
Oriflame is also doing well, on the whole. As many other European companies, we were founded and headquartered in Sweden. We are actually the fastest growing cosmetics company in the market, and were last year too, growing globally at 26 per cent. Oriflame Europe is very well penetrated, we have a good presence in world markets and are still growing well. But we will come to a point where we cannot grow that fast and therefore, we are looking at Latin America and Asia, where we see big growth opportunities.
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Logo from Oriflame.