mottusbeauty.com

Leslie Blodgett’s Perfume Diaries Bare Skin Eau de Parfum was recently launched at Sephora. A brochure to Sephora’s beauty insiders mentioned the launch in September, but it wasn’t on counter until mid-October.

Blodgett is CEO of Bare Escentuals and is the company’s pitch woman on QVC. She has become a celebrity and a TV personality. But one has to ask why BARE, which is a public company, should put its business at risk of becoming a personality-driven or celebrity enterprise.

If BARE and Leslie are inseparable, the company will fluctuate as a celebrity and not as a corporation. If a company wishes to acquire BARE, it has to make its decision based not on the success of its brands, Bare Escentuals or Bare Minerals, but on the company’s spokes person.

BARE recently opened Bloomingdale’s 59th Street store and has a location near the 60th Street side of the store near the elevators, a space that had been dedicated to accessories. It is an okay space but is not central to the beauty department where Estee Lauder, Lancôme and Laura Mercier are located.

BARE has opened a number of its own boutiques in New York City and also holds key locations at Sephora. Its makeup line is doing well with its Buxom product additions, which are cheeky and follow lines such as Urban Decay, Stila and Too Faced. But the Leslie Blodgett Perfume Diaries sounds like a celebrity soap opera that will see seasonal scents and mood changes.

There is also a question if Blodgett will receive royalties for the use of her name, which is customary to fashion designers and celebrities. BARE announced its quarterly report, ending September 27, where sales were up 4 percent to $135.7 million and profits were down slightly from $22.9 million from $22.6 million.

North American retail was up from $80.5 million to $88.3 million, but North American direct was down from $32.4 million to $26.9 million. Obviously expanding distribution has taken sales from the company’s infomercials and QVC.

In a transcript where security analysts listened to Blodgett and Myles McCormick, we learn that in the quarter BARE opened 27 boutiques. There are 40 more boutiques in the quarter than they were a year ago. There were 124 locations at quarter end, and McCormick was enthusiastic about the large boutique that will be opened in New York’s Times Square in November.

One can also conclude that a great deal of BARE’s sales came from makeup introduced since January. The end-caps at Sephora to house Buxom added considerable space and inventories for the line. One might also expect that its Mineral Foundations are off. One analyst asked if Maybelline’s new mineral line was cannibalizing BARE, but the question was deftly avoided.

Interestingly, management said that department stores and Estee Lauder Companies’ decision to close Prescriptives in early 2010 presented opportunities for BARE. BARE opened its first boutique in the U.K. in London. There are great opportunities for a company that is expanding distribution and adding emphasis in makeup and fragrances, but the question remains if its loss of share in mineral foundations will affect its profits and core customer following.