Prestige Beauty Sales Lack Luster in France

PARIS — As the curtain rises on Paris Fashion Week, and models’ hair and makeup become key components in setting a show’s tenor, the French prestige beauty market lacks luster, posting negative sales growth in perfumeries and department stores. The segment’s revenues generated in such channels, including brick-and-mortar and online platforms, minus sales rung up from exclusive and private-label brands, declined 2 percent to 2.99 billion euros in 2018, according to The NPD Group. The country’s prestige beauty market, which last year had the weakest performance in Europe, has struggled for a while. It had a 1 percent sales dip in 2017 and a 2 percent decrease in 2016. That’s due to competition in France — as in most markets — which has become rife with brands increasingly focusing on their own e-commerce sites and freestanding stores. Chanel and Dior, for instance, are more frequently going direct-to-consumer through their own boutiques. “We also have a lot of pure players in the French market,” Mathilde Lion, Europe beauty industry expert at NPD, told WWD. Vertical specialty brands, such as Kiko Milano and NYX Professional Makeup, are chipping away at some traditional retailers’ market share as well. “With the success of Kiko France since it entered the French

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