American brand Elizabeth Arden, one of the oldest names in the beauty industry, is embarking on an ambitious repositioning plan and its president is counting on her Singapore roots to steer the beauty behemoth ahead of the competition.
“Being a Singaporean, what you learn since young is to always stay ahead of the game,” said Ms JuE Wong, who took the helm at the more than century-old brand slightly more than a year ago, becoming the highest-ranked Singaporean in a multinational beauty company.
“When I was growing up, there was only one university. If you (didn’t) make it to the National University of Singapore (NUS), you basically (had) to think of somewhere else to go,” said the 49-year-old, who eventually opted to pursue her undergraduate studies in Australia after missing out on her first choice to read law at NUS.
“That’s why I think I’ve always been conditioned and trained to be an outside-the-box thinker,” she added.
This sense of fast-thinking adaptability is what Ms Wong wants to inject into Elizabeth Arden, as the iconic brand seeks to win over consumers from the younger generation amid the constant emergence of newer brands and a changing retail world in a digital age.
While the brand’s 106 years of heritage underscores “trust and credibility that can only be earned over time”, Ms Wong admitted that it can also, at times, work as an obstacle when it comes to attracting younger consumers, especially those between the ages of 28 and 40. Hence, the company is turning its target to even-younger millennials who have shown a greater willingness to give the brand a try.
“When we did our consumer insights, we found that people from the age group of 28 to 40 know who we are and know enough to often think ‘This is my mother’s brand’. On the other hand, those younger than 25 have not heard that much about us. They do not have any perceived baggage and so (are) willing to give us a chance.”
To appeal to this group of digital-savvy millennials, Elizabeth Arden stepped up its digital strategy with a social media campaign called “From the desk of #LizArden” and partnered beauty app YouCam Makeup. According to Ms Wong, both initiatives have been a success, especially the latter, which delivered a sizeable boost to its e-commerce sales.
Available in the US and China, the app is equipped with facial recognition technology that allows users to virtually try on various makeup products and provides direct links for shoppers to make purchases on Elizabeth Arden’s online platform.
“We met the developers in September, had a soft launch in October and by the time we rolled out officially in December, we already had 58 million downloads and 22.9 per cent of these reposted a selfie marked with our name. I had almost a million dollar in sales (within) 30 days,” Ms Wong told Channel NewsAsia.
In Singapore, the company launched a pop-up store, featuring a smart mirror and an interactive wall that tells the history of Elizabeth Arden, outside Robinsons at The Heeren to mark the roll-out of its latest product earlier this week.
“By making ourselves more cutting-edge and more engaging for the younger audiences, I think we make ourselves relevant,” said Ms Wong.
Even in a downbeat brick-and-mortar retail market, Ms Wong remains confident that the beauty giant can turn around the situation by identifying pockets of growth in areas such as the colour cosmetics and spa categories.
For instance, the company started introducing services from its Red Door Spa brand at selected retail counters in the US. Sales at these counters have since posted “double-digit growth”, according to Ms Wong. “We are offering a point of differentiation … and I think that’s how you cultivate a new generation to experience what the brand is all about.”
Nonetheless, the businesswoman acknowledged that the brand’s digital ventures are no walk in the park. Coupled with the fact that it would be the first time she is taking on a leadership position at a giant such as Elizabeth Arden, Ms Wong admitted that it has been “a bit of a leap” but she was not daunted.
Prior to becoming president of the Elizabeth Arden brand, the Singaporean was the chief executive of venture-backed cosmeceutical company StriVectin as well as Astral Health and Beauty, and held senior positions at then-emerging brands including Murad and N.V Perricone MD.
“Compared to the smaller brands, there’s enough resources at Elizabeth Arden and I was able to push a lot of my ideas. Of course, if I made a mistake, it would be amplified but does that make me less of a risk taker? No … and the Singaporean in me, ‘kiasu’ as we call it, means that I’m not going to lose,” she added with a chuckle.
“Even though I’ve been away longer than I lived in Singapore, but once a Singaporean, always a Singaporean.”
DARING TO GO: SWITCHING FROM COMMODITY TRADING TO SKINCARE
This huge appetite for risks is also observable from Ms Wong’s resume. After graduating from the Australian National University with a degree in political science, she decided to take a plunge into the trading world and later spent seven years on the trading floor at Cargill Commodities.
“I wanted something out of my comfort zone and it was very challenging,” Ms Wong recalled. “We had a daily scorecard of the books that were closed … it was like playing chess and at the end of every day, you either checkmate or you get checkmated.”
A “self-driven reason of wanting to know better ways of skincare” led Ms Wong into the beauty industry in the US during the 2000s, and for the Singaporean, there was no mountain that was too high to conquer.
“After leaving Murad to join private equity-owned Perricone, it was since that time (that) I never had to look for a job because every time I take a brand and turn it around, another private equity firm would come to me or the same private equity firm would offer me another brand,” said Ms Wong, who was nominated as the Top 50 women to watch by Wall Street Journal in 2004.
“It was very validating because I realised that at the end of the day, you can get so much recognition if you had a real scorecard. And in that regard, I think my days in commodity trading really prepared me for today.”
While her fast-talking persona and dare-to-go attitude has resulted in “some hindrances” at the start of her career, Ms Wong does not regret the career switches that she has made, and hailing from the little red dot on the world map definitely has not stopped her from climbing up the corporate ladder in the Big Apple.
Ms Wong said: “My mother would tell you this story … when I was 12, I told her that one day I was going to work in the Big Apple and she replied to me saying, ‘Don’t be silly’. I don’t remember this … but if I did, a part of me perhaps realised that Singapore may be a small country but it had a very good reputation.
“Literally everybody has heard of us and we never really had to explain where we come from. And because I came from a country that’s so well respected, it gave me the courage to dare to dream.”