Kiehl’s: how the company is engaging its consumer base

A new report from Positive Luxury suggests that beauty brands and retailers are seeing a rising demand for engaging their stakeholders in new and innovative ways.

Positive Luxury, which describes itself as a platform that ‘connects luxury brands with consumers that care’, released the report entitled ‘The World is Ruled by Emotions: Breaking Tradition the Millennial Way’ via its site, and it is available here​.

Kiehl’s is an international brand active in premium personal care. This article is part of a series of interviews with retailers and brands featured in the Positive Luxury report.

Why is the trend for better consumer engagement a focus for Kiehl's? How are you responding to it?​

Kiehl’s is a company born out of serving the demands of our customers. From our early days as an apothecary in the East Village of New York City, our products and services have evolved based on the concerns and needs of our customers.

A recent example of this is how our patrons’ desires help shape our product formulations. We know that provenance of ingredients and product safety is of the utmost importance to our customers.

These days customers are also looking for more natural formulas that also do not contain parabens or sulfates. We’ve got some exciting new products coming that specifically answer these customer needs.

Does the demand vary regionally/for different consumer groups demographics? Is it important to differentiate your offering to meet different engagement demands, and if so, how can this be done?​

We have always taken a personalised approach to skincare, as each patron is an individual with unique concerns.

As such, we never recommend products by range and always offer a regime based on skin needs, ideally following a skin consultation. We realise that more and more, customers also have different expectations based on where they choose to shop and as such, we are tailoring our offer by channel.

In Department Stores, the focus could be on new customers, so we showcase more tried and tested formulas, whereas in our boutiques we may focus more on brand partnership events and experiences.