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Bath & Body Works will go to college.Students of hundreds of US universities will soon be able to buy the fragrances, candles and other articles of the company in the Campus bookstores, departing from the long-standing business model of the beauty dealer while trying to attract areas buyers of Gen-Z.
Bath & Body has done business with bookstore operators such as Barnes & Noble and Follett Corp to create shops within about 600 campus shops, where they will sell popular fragrances such as Teakwood mahogany and the Champagne toast, Reuters told Reuters the new CEO Daniel Heaf. Schools include George Washington University, Boston College and Vanderbilt University.
It is the first time that Bath & Body will sell objects outside his shops, but it won’t be the last one, Hef said.”This idea of being an wholesale brand or a direct brand to the consumer is over,” he added, adding that the distribution of third parties will be the key to growth in the future.
The strengthening of sales with Gen-Z is a priority for Heaf, which took the reins in May after a difficult year that saw the shares of the company removed from the S&P 500 index of reference. The shares have lost 24% in the last two years and have closed on Tuesday at $ 28.93.
University bookcases could be fertile ground to measure what younger buyers want to invest a lot of capital, said Morningstar analyst Jaime Katz.
It is also “a way to maintain the conversation that goes with teenage girls while … they no longer live with their parents, they no longer go to their usual places,” said Katz. A Piper Sandler’s April survey in Investment Bank found that, among teenagers, fragrance sales increased by 22% compared to the same time last year, making it the most rapid growth in the beauty sector among the buyers of teenagers.
Before joining Bath & Body, Heaf held various roles at Nike, including managing his direct activity to the consumer, in which the former CEO John Donahoe leaning heavily after the pandemic, reducing the dependence of the clothing brand on third -party retailers. That direct round to the consumer has turned out in aquake and since then Nike has tried to repair his retail relationships. But analysts have attributed the failure more to the lack of fresh products than to the work of Heaf, whose reputation as an innovator remains solid.
Katz believes that the $ 29 price of $ 29 of Bath & Body could be a deal, detecting the strong operating margins of the company and the exposure limited to rates. A challenge that Bath & Body Faces said, is to communicate to consumers the breadth of its product line, ranging from soaps to balms for the lips to wall flows. From this front, Heaf has hinted that the company could try to simplify the offers, focusing on the strongest sellers and increasing its digital presence. Bath & Body spends 3% to 4% of its marketing revenues, but Heaf said it would prefer to focus on less, but deeper campaigns to increase the brand’s awareness.
“Think of a video on Instagram that tells a story about the product,” he said. “Building awareness leads to a delay in the purchase, because you are capturing a new consumer. But it works. I saw it work.”
