Premium Beauty News – How has IBG been doing since it was acquired by Fremman Capital last June?
Xavier Leclerc de Hauteclocque – The company has maintained its momentum: our growth is far superior to that of the market. Since 2019, we have grown from 42 to 400 people, through organic growth and acquisitions, and we have become one of the best project management companies in our industry. Our 2024 turnover will almost reach 350 million euros generated with more than 200 clients. And as is often the case, a quarter of them accounts for 80% of it. In our current situation, we aim to focus on specific client profiles, clients that we can support in the long term.
Premium Beauty News – What profiles, exactly?
Xavier Leclerc – Our turnover is well distributed: 50% with retailers, both discount and mass market, 25% with retailers specialized in the beauty world and pharmacies, and 25% with fast-growing beauty brands.
Our business is balanced between the US and Europe, including 10% in France, and a minor activity in Asia. What matters to us is to be present in all price segments to follow consumer pattern changes.
Premium Beauty News – You help your clients by designing the development of cosmetics ranges from A to Z, in almost all categories. What is your positioning compared to the full-service market?
Xavier Leclerc – We are positioned as a natural extension to our clients’ teams. We offer them agility to streamline processes with our two brands: Orchard, our broadest commercial offer on all product types, including formulation, and Fasten, our packaging-only solution, either through redesign or new ranges. Our strength lies in our ability to create comprehensive ranges. This represents 85% of our business. Some of our projects involve more than 50 items. Thanks to our 65 designers combined with our 130 experts in project management, we support our clients in speeding up development thanks to an ecosystem of industrial partners, which we built up according to client and product typologies.
We have also got a third activity now, IBG Lab, which is a brand incubator. The Lab is intended for developing our own brands in collaboration with distributors. We have five now, and we plan to launch three to five every year, but also to purchase a few, as we did with Doucéa, a French dermocosmetics brand. To be innovative in this field, we will position ourselves on little-exploited niches representing great opportunities.
Premium Beauty News – What are your main qualities?
Xavier Leclerc – I would mention our design skill first. For new launches, but also relaunches. We have redesigned ranges of 20 or 30 items by reducing the product carbon footprint by 20% to 35%, often through reducing costs.
Our second main advantage is our quality and regulatory service, which counts 50 dedicated people. For our clients, it is a major, complex issue they can forget about. I think this service branch will continue to gain in importance.
Thirdly, we make our resources available to clients who do not necessarily have the skills needed in the area they aim to develop by building up an ecosystem of dedicated partners. We are also highly selective with new clients. I want us to be aligned with each other regarding the operating mode from the outset, and I prefer to develop a partnership-oriented mindset with fewer, but more important clients. It is a new way to work and it is often based on a strategic decision made by the CEO to develop more agility.
Premium Beauty News – How do you manage production?
Xavier Leclerc – We design everything: formulas, moulds, packaging, and accessories, but we do not carry out production, because our strength lies in the breadth of our range. It would simply be impossible to manufacture all these products from different categories in all countries. We have a network of partners to whom we outsource manufacturing under the aegis of our quality control team. I believe that this is in line with expectations, because the market is focused on greater agility, in particular as part of the production is being regionalised, and demand is shifting towards efficient, but still affordable offerings.
Premium Beauty News – Can you tell us more about your targets when it comes to development?
Xavier Leclerc – We aim to develop other categories, including perfumes and mists, because there is room for progress, although their share in our turnover has grown from 6% to 12%. Then, I would like to enhance our technical expertise in all areas. For example, we have been working a lot on opportunities related to the microbiome and microplastics substitution. We would like to understand how to offer stronger expertise to brands that do not have the means to.
Premium Beauty News – What about your growth objectives?
Xavier Leclerc – We aim to keep growing faster than the market and find growth niches in little-exploited segments. The group has risen from 20% to 30% for the fourth consecutive year and we have planned to keep up this momentum.
The full-service model is changing. We are product designers and developers, but we would like to become brand designers and “social commerce” experts, so our projects get even more consistent. Right now, barriers to entry no longer really concern product design, or even manufacturing, but rather the possibility to emerge on the market.
IBG will also open new offices in other countries: it is important to secure local support.
Lastly, next February, we will move into new premises in Paris, which will also house the functional headquarters and the packaging and formula laboratories.
