Adds Gordon Tareta, director of spas for Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels, which provides a number of treatments that are based on dessert ingredients: “There's a lot of realization nowadays stemming from general awareness of health that the outside is a mirror of what's within. The skin is the body's largest organ."

Nevertheless, both the nutrition business and the skin-care business are looking for new venues for significant growth because they’re running into some problems in their traditional markets. The food business is casting about everywhere for more healthful offerings as it becomes the target of obesity lawsuits, for example, while the color-cosmetics business has been a drag on beauty companies with the recent lag in the economy. Wellness-driven skin products could turn out to be a billion-dollar market, estimates Walter Levy, a managing director at Kurt Salmon Associates, who specializes in retail trends and positioning.

Olay Vitamins are a timely case in point. This new line actually goes beyond promising benefits just for the skin and vows to help women improve their overall health and feelings of well-being.

The two companies maintain that Olay's “skin expertise, combined with Pharmavite nutritional knowledge, translates into a science-based line that really resonates with women.” More than that, says Barbara Lindquist, senior product manager for Olay Vitamins, is that the idea is new to a rather moribund vitamin marketplace. “There was a lot of growth from new-product introductions in vitamins in the nineties, but there's been no new ‘news’ in the last few years,” she says. “It has been stagnant, with no growth, and in dire need of some new excitement and innovation, something that can attract new, younger users to the category, and grow it.”

Olay Vitamins also make for a fitting line extension for the Olay brand, which Ohio-based P&G has been remaking over the last several years. Known for decades as Oil of Olay, the brand recently shed the “Oil of” from its moniker, which both freed it from the negative connotations of oily ingredients and gave it freedom to apply more broadly to include, among others, products that consumers ingest.

The Olay Vitamins line includes seven “beauty nutrients” and eight “wellness nutrients” that allow women to mix and match and create a “personalized supplement regimen,” the two companies say. They include regular multivitamins and a multivitamin aimed at women 50 years old and over. “Beauty” products include Nourishing Evening Primrose Complex, which “nourishes and soothes dry skin,” and Vitamin A Retinol/Beta Carotene, which “supports cell renewal for a young appearance.” “Wellness” entries include something called Super B Stress Defense, which includes an “environmental and stress-defense system for the skin,” and a Daily Energy Pack for Women, which “helps provide optimal energy levels.”

Olay Vitamins will retail for prices ranging from US$ 8 to $25 when they debut in August at food, drug, mass and club stores across the United States. “Our pricing will be comparable to other products on the market,” Lindquist says. Yet, she adds, “all the formulations within Olay Vitamins are unique and different,” which will allow the brand to price the products as a premium.

The idea for Olay Vitamins began with the recognition that women purchase the vast majority of vitamin products (just as they do nearly every other consumable). Plus, Lindquist explains, both companies’ executives had noticed that in department stores, salons and other “alternative channels” for supplements and other nutritional products, more and more women were willing to pay high prices for “vitamin supplements that used the notion of beauty from within.”

The companies teamed up and performed a lot of consumer research to find out exactly what women were looking for in this arena. Last year, P&G studied American women ages 18 through 65 and found that 61 percent of them took vitamins and supplements, and that 42 percent of them felt that vitamins and herbs could improve the appearance of their facial skin. Pharmavite followed that up with market research with more than 1,900 women, who collectively expressed “an enormous interest in the concept of Olay Vitamins in terms of purchase interest, liking them overall, and price-value considerations.”

Pharmavite and Olay had these women test its products for four weeks and found that 78 percent of them “probably would buy our products after they had used them,” Lindquist reports. Fully 72 percent of the test category “saw genuine skin improvement” after four weeks.

At the same time, Pharmavite and Olay were reviewing 130 studies that showed the effects of certain vitamins on women’s health and on skin health, specifically. Several themes emerged from that research, Lindquist says. First was that consuming a multivitamin daily was a good foundation. Second, there are unique needs that women have, where ingredients such as soy and calcium can assist. Third, vitamins could be helpful in assisting skin structure and renewal, such as in supporting collagen and in nourishing dry skin. The studies also noted that antioxidants could play a specific role in boosting skin health as well as women’s health overall.

The two companies are counting on the pull of the Olay brand as well as an ambitious “consumer-education” program to create demand for Olay Vitamins. Marketing tactics will include point-of-purchase materials such as a “flip booklet” at the shelf that takes consumers through the Olay regimen, Lindquist says. Advertising will be on TV, in magazines and in freestanding inserts in Sunday newspapers. “There are a lot of synergies that make sense from the standpoint of the equity of the Olay brand,” Lindquist says. “This is a huge opportunity, because right now the vitamin category is confusing to most women.”

With all the activity to bring inner beauty to the surface, it seems that skin care is no longer a shallow business.    

[11-Aug-2003]