Belcorp: The Beautiful Message

How a multinational beauty company manages its vast array of product information to create (and future-proof) its vital marketing efforts.

The modern beauty industry is complex indeed. Companies in this highly competitive arena succeed only when they connect their many products to the needs and desires of ordinary people. These are consumers looking for a brand they can trust and rely upon when it comes to their own self-image. Every product is a personal connection, not just a commodity. One such company – Belcorp – has successfully made this connection with its customers for years. But in today’s multichannel environment, that also poses an ongoing marketing challenge.

When a beauty company offers multiple products, sells to customers in many countries, and supports a large, knowledgeable, in-person sales organization, it must have a strong, agile marketing presence. It must maintain a complex array of printed catalogs and other targeted marketing materials and plan for the same level of complexity in its digital media. This is a closer look at how Belcorp is meeting the challenge today – and planning for success in the future.

A history of personal connection

Belcorp was founded over fifty years ago, dedicated to the ideal of promoting beauty as a way to achieve personal fulfillment. It uses a direct, in-person sales model – a vast network of consultants throughout the Americas – to connect with individual customers. This go-to-market strategy has created a positive experience for many, helping thousands of women achieve economic independence. Belcorp CEO Erika Herrero notes, “day by day, we are transforming the lives of thousands of women and their families.” But the company’s purpose transcends the economic results. “We promote beauty to achieve personal fulfillment,” says Belcorp spokeswoman Joy Chion Li.

“We inspire each person to give their best so that they and those around them achieve the extraordinary.”

This lofty goal has guided the company to remarkable success. Since its founding in 1968, Belcorp has grown its in-person sales network to over 850 thousand consultants in 13 countries in the Americas. In addition, the company operates 54 physical retail locations, and in 2016 it launched a robust e-commerce presence.

Today, Belcorp has three distinct but interrelated product lines. The Ésika line features an array of high-quality makeup, perfumes, personal care products, and jewelry – all designed to “inspire women to own their confidence and celebrate their power.” The L’BEL brand combines beauty, health, and technology in the form of personal hygiene and skincare products for both women and men. The third line, Cyzone, offers high-quality, affordable beauty products designed for younger women.

In addition to its product lines’ impressive breadth and scope, Belcorp’s products reflect its commitment to sustainable development and manufacturing, including certification of its cruelty-free testing requirements. This is all carefully managed, along with the data related to each individual product.

The data challenge

Each year, Belcorp introduces over 2,000 new products across its three product lines, sometimes replacing previous products but often adding to the company’s total offering. Each product can have around 30 distinct data points. These include everything from colors and attributes in a Product Information Management (PIM) system to digital photos and descriptions stored in a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system. Other data, such as pricing and inventory, add to the mix.

Needless to say, with such a massive amount of data, plus the demand for multi-version color catalogs and other sales collateral, this poses a formidable challenge to those in charge of product marketing. In addition, the rise of digital—from e-commerce websites to mobile versions of its catalogs—has complicated the marketing mix even further. To meet their ever-increasing need for high-quality sales tools, Belcorp’s marketing workflow needs to be as agile and personal as the beauty consultants themselves.

The Belcorp Workflow

To achieve these spectacular results, Belcorp standardized on two powerful tools, Adobe Creative Cloud and a comprehensive data approach, Comosoft’s LAGO.

To create color catalogs for Belcorp consultants covering all three product lines, production designers must have the tools to create aesthetically pleasing layouts that are also accurate on every product detail. The problem is that every beauty and personal care product has its own collection of images and data – not to mention key information to facilitate each product order. Mistakes in a catalog read by millions can lead to fulfillment problems, lost sales, and a blow to customer approval and satisfaction.

Every Belcorp catalog seems like a publishing miracle, considering it must have distinct regional and language versions delivered on time to thousands of beauty consultants. To achieve these spectacular results consistently, the company standardized on two powerful tools. One is Adobe Creative Cloud applications, notably InDesign and Photoshop, to create its beauty-themed pages and the other is a comprehensive data and production management system, Comosoft’s LAGO.

By standardizing on Adobe InDesign, Belcorp harnessed the world’s most advanced system for creating beautiful pages. In addition to its powerful text and image handling capabilities, InDesign has a robust “plugin” environment, allowing for effective integration with third-party applications. That’s where LAGO fits in perfectly.

The LAGO system is a powerful, behind-the-scenes system for coordinating complex product data and assets – even when held in separate PIM, DAM, and other data repositories. LAGO connects every product SKU to its related data, assisting everyone from campaign management and planning to the production of catalogs and other marketing materials. But LAGO’s “secret ingredient” is its direct connection to Adobe InDesign.

Using an intuitive LAGO plugin, each InDesign user has instant access to all the data and assets required to design a product page display. They do not need to hunt for product images, descriptions, or specifications. LAGO supplies everything as directed by the overall campaign plan. If product data or photos are modified or replaced during the catalog design process, they are automatically updated in the InDesign layout. Everything is “live” right up to the last moment when the catalog file is sent to the printer.

Creating multiple versions of a catalog is also straightforward. When a separate catalog is created for each of Belcorp’s national regions, the designer simply uses the project “master” file as the basis for unlimited versions, which can be customized based on regional marketing needs.

Local versioning is especially important to a multinational company like Belcorp. Not only do their catalogs need to be accurate in Spanish, Portuguese, and English (for the U.S. market), but also they must serve the diverse demographic, cultural, and consumer preferences that are unique to each region. LAGO enables the Belcorp marketing teams to to all this cost-effectively. The efficiencies of using LAGO for creating such diverse printed materials are obvious, but they do not stop there.

As Belcorp looks to the future of multichannel marketing, Comosoft is helping them “future-proof” their efforts.

Winds of change

Digital media have radically changed how companies connect with new and existing customers. Belcorp is acutely aware of this and has enabled its vast, in-person sales force to embrace new ways of making that personal connection. Using various digital channels, their beauty consultants advise and accompany their clients before, during, and after each purchase. In addition, Belcorp’s customer service center, and the three brands, actively use social networks, such as Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, so that consumers can reach out, provide feedback, and ask questions. With that change comes the need to create digital versions of their printed materials. Fortunately, Comosoft LAGO can make that happen.

“We see LAGO as an enabler for our digital strategy. We are working to streamline our content production to serve not only the print world but also the digital one.”

 

For every print catalog or other piece of marketing collateral, LAGO can automatically take the results – including product information and images for that campaign – and transfer them to a website, e-commerce portal, or mobile application. Once set up, digital channels will be populated automatically and customized to meet customer buying preferences. This customization gives each individual beauty consultant an even more effective connection with their loyal customers.

“We see LAGO as an enabler for our digital strategy,” says Li. “We are working to streamline our content production to serve not only the print world but also the digital one.” For a growing international beauty company, this is a wise move.

In a world where customers are bombarded by so many messages over so many different channels, Belcorp’s combination of personal connection, care, and agile, smart technology may indeed be a beautiful message.

About Comosoft

Founded in 1994, Comosoft has decades of experience partnering with companies like Belcorp throughout the Americas, helping them thrive in the complex, data-driven world of retail marketing and promotion.

Comosoft is an established, global pioneer in multichannel media and PIM systems for the consumer goods, retail, catalog, e-commerce, and manufacturing sectors. Its goal is to provide data and media production platforms to meet the ever-changing channel requirements of modern, global business, marketing, and digitally-enabled commerce. Comosoft’s LAGO software tools reflect best practices and proven workflows for optimizing data-intensive content.