Word: revlon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...running a cosmetics empire. But he started out as an electric power salesman, trained as a manager in the ITT cauldron, and rose to head that conglomerate's European operations, a job that taught him about acquisitions, finance, and the making and marketing of just about anything. At Revlon, while continuing to broaden the product line and promoting some new merchandising ideas, Chairman Bergerac, now 46, talks a language that was long unfamiliar to the cosmetics trade. It is a lingo of inventory control, strict manufacturing standards and tight, detailed budgets. The payoff: sales and profits have multiplied about...
...fears. Though some detect a one-last-fling attitude on the part of customers, many merchants have been notably cautious in stocking up, largely because high interest rates make borrowing to carry a large inventory too much of a risk. Says Leonard Lauder, president of Estée Lauder Inc., Revlon's toughest rival in the high-priced end of the cosmetics business: "The thing I predict with absolute certainty for this Christmas is that the people who wait until Dec. 24 to do their shopping will find the shelves bare...
...presents a difficult problem, alas, for cosmetics makers, who know only too well that any appeal to women who are "mature" or "experienced" (or whatever other euphemism might be dreamed up for older women) would be the kiss of death. One response that Bergerac has made is to retarget Revlon's lowest-priced line, Natural Wonder, once aimed specifically at teenagers, to reach women aged 18 to 34?not by changing the products but by picturing slightly older females in the ads. Just over half of all American women now have jobs vs. less than a third...
...riskiest?changes are those that cosmetics makers try in order to fit their products to women's mental pictures of themselves. Theirs is a complicated and mysterious business in which product, packaging and advertising must work together to present a unified appeal to emotions that may be partly unconscious. Revlon has pushed this psychological approach as hard as anyone, as is best illustrated by a three-part tale that also is a commentary on American lifestyles...
...about the Far East. All that gets pretty far removed from discos; certainly Revlon's admen would not dream of suggesting that a woman go disco dancing in a veiled hat. But if disco lights dictate dark lips and eyes, and that suggests an exotic aura of which veils are a symbol?well, who gives a damn about logic...