P&G focus shifts from women to men

After spending decades luring women with products such as Olay skin cream, Procter & Gamble Co is about to tell men they need pampering too.

P&G will introduce a pre-shave thermal scrub, which it likens to a hot towel at the barber shop, along with a cooling after-shave moisturiser next week. The four products, selling for $7 to $9, make up the first skin-care line aimed at men since P&G’s $61-billion acquisition of Gillette five years ago.

P&G is seeking to persuade buyers of Gillette razors to take better care of their skin after the company’s sales fell 3.3 percent last year. It’s also a further push into higher- margin beauty products for the world’s largest consumer-products company, which makes Charmin toilet paper and moved into cosmetics in the 1980s.

“We have an aspiration to be the biggest and best beauty and grooming company,” Chip Bergh, who heads P&G’s grooming unit, said in a telephone interview. “But we can’t get there unless we win with men.”

Gillette’s new ProSeries line, which includes a face wash for sensitive skin and a moisturiser that protects against ultra- violet rays, will debut in North America on June 6 and be available globally by the end of next year, Cincinnati-based P&G said.

Trying It
Chief Executive Officer Bob McDonald is tapping the men’s grooming market to help reach his goal of adding 1 billion new consumers by 2015. Worldwide sales of skin care, hair care, bath and shower products, and deodourant for men reached $26.6 billion last year, up 44 per cent from 2004, according to research firm Euromonitor International Plc.

“I expect this to be very profitable for them, but it’s going to require education to get people to try it and to get over the hump of the cost (of the products), ” said Matt McCormick, a portfolio manager at Cincinnati-based Bahl & Gaynor Inc., which has $2.8 billion under management, including P&G shares.

Beauty products are among the more recession-resistant product categories, according to a Sanford C Bernstein & Co. survey of US consumers released in March. Consumers are less likely to buy a cheaper version of their favourite skin cream or perfume than of detergent, batteries or diapers, the survey showed.

P&G’s products will compete for customers with Beiersdorf AG’s Nivea for Men, L’Oreal SA’s Men’s Expert and Unilever’s Dove for Men skin-care lines. Gillette has an edge, because it’s a male brand that doesn’t need to make clear that it’s “for men,” said Bergh, the P&G executive.