Katherine Connolly, newly appointed global director of Retail and Spa Operations at Anne Semonin, discusses her plans for the brand.
What attracted you to the Anne Semonin brand?
Anne Semonin has such a great heritage and really fabulous credentials. The quality of the products and active ingredients, as well as its whole approach to prescribing personalised regimes to detoxify the skin and combat the signs of ageing – it’s a remarkable brand, and one with huge integrity.
The brand has a wonderful team of people with a shared passion for the industry, extensive knowledge and a positive belief in working together to support colleagues, customers and business partners.
What is your role in the company?
Anne Semonin is an iconic and highly-respected brand, however the marketplace is very crowded, competitive and fast moving. We cannot afford to stand still, and always have to be looking to the future.
My role is to create a strategy to take things forward in a way that will create sustainable growth. We’ve been doing a lot of thinking, a lot of research, and have identified a number of exciting opportunities to grow the brand further.
What are your plans for the brands growth?
At the moment Anne Semonin is primarily a spa treatment brand, available in over 200 luxury outlets around the globe. It’s upmarket, niche and exclusive, all of which is positive. However, this means a huge number of potential customers are either unaware of it, or unlikely to have the opportunity of trying the products. In many ways it’s a well-kept secret! We want to give it more of a retail emphasis, add more of an experiential dimension, and increase the number of brand touchpoints.
In terms of style and image it is very much a ‘classic’ French brand, quite understated and restrained, definitely niche. We’ll be repositioning it, revamping the packaging, giving it more sensory values, making it more expressive. The intention is to broaden the appeal so more women see it as forming part of their everyday skincare and beauty regime. Over the next few years we want to turn it into a significant world player in the cosmetics and spa market, and ultimately become a major international lifestyle brand.
What competitive advantage can Anne Semonin bring to spas around the world?
Our founder pioneered the spa concept with the creation of the first ‘beauty farm’ in the French Alps over 30 years ago. She also developed our signature facial massage technique still considered one the best facials by industry insiders. Not only are we proud of the heritage in treatments and products, we thrive in providing a truly personal client service tailor made to the needs of our hotel clients whether they are a city spa or resort location with a seasonal operation. Most importantly, we fully understand the intricacies of running a successful spa and can assist spa managers in unleashing the true potential of their business in their quest to turn their spa into a profit centre.
How would you describe the Anne Semonin consumer profile?
Our customers are 35-55 year old professional women. We’re aligning ourselves with confident and strong individuals, women who know what they want, who have a sure sense of style and a bit of attitude!
What are your plans to evolve the Anne Semonin spa offering?
Going forward we’re looking at new ways of engaging more closely with greater numbers of our target consumers. We are enriching our treatment and product menus with innovative additions as the brand always has done. There is also an exciting retail concept in the works that Spas will find very interesting. Last but not least we are looking at extending the product range into other areas beyond skincare and beauty, but still with a sensory element at its core.
