“The first results that I am going to present are not very encouraging,” warns Mathilde Lion in preamble.
Sales of perfume fell by 32%, make-up by 39% and skincare by 30%.
These results are equivalent to those of the takeaway restaurant business, which fell by 31%.
Some industries fared better. This is the case for toys, which lost only 2%, or sporting goods (-16%).
There was a catch-up effect. Many purchases were made after containment.
However, this rebound effect on beauty was not seen.
“We have this type of result all over the world. Some industries have clearly benefited from containment, such as video games. Clothing is coming out of the crisis a little faster than beauty”, analyses Mathilde Lion. “It seems that the cosmetics industry is taking longer to return to growth. The performance of Prestige beauty, at the end of May 2020, has never been so low. However, not all countries have experienced the same falls. Of course, it is negative everywhere, but there is still a difference of nearly 10 points of decline between the United States (-26) or Canada (-23) and areas such as France (-36) or the United Kingdom (-35).”

How can these differences be …