Week4: Marketing Environment

BARE ESSCENTUALS
"For me to consider a marketing program, I have to be able to relate to the business model as a consumer," says Leslie Blodgett, now in her 11^th year as president and CEO of Bare Escentuals and MD Beauty, the San Francisco-based cosmetics and skincare giant. "I have to think about how captivated and compelled I get by the message. And when we started considering using direct response  a year or two after we started at QVC I thought it was a good idea."Not surprisingly, Blodgett who has captivated and compelled QVC shoppers since her first appearance in 1997  has also wowed DR consumers since the first of the company's three infomercials for its bareMinerals line began airing in 2002. The company was QVC's vendor of the year in 2002. Meanwhile, Bare Escentuals' bareMinerals infomercials have been consistent sales winners. The concept of using infomercials started with the amount of mail the company received from customers. "We get hundreds of letters and E-mails  I even get gifts from customers," Blodgett says with astonishment. "We were able to contact these women, and we asked them if they'd be interested in flying in and talking to a camera about their feelings on the products. They had such a broad range of issues rosacea, acne, other things  but they uniformly said the products worked for them."

But it wasn't just great products and a great working atmosphere that built Bare Escentuals into a beauty products leader. "Having our own retail stores, that was a new experience for me," she says. Blodgett began watching QVC. "In my own head, I became friendly with all the hosts, and really began enjoying watching their sales process," she contends.It was about the same time that the company had just repackaged its make-up brand under the name bareMinerals. Blodgett says the brand, then called Bare Escentuals Make-Up, was incomplete and needed "refurbishing." She adds, "We made it complete everything from eye shadows to lipsticks and renamed and repositioned it."