From a small shop lot in Sri Petaling, Alliance Cosmetics group has spread all over Malaysia and Singapore. Its staff of 16 to 18 people has now grown to over 230 (95% of them women).
Over the years, they’ve managed to expand their portfolio to include a range of cosmetics and bodycare products, including Revlon, Wet ‘n’ Wild, Avene, Elancyl and Silky. Revlon still remains their top-selling brand and is labelled the premium of the mass-market brands, after L’Oreal. Neither of them flinches when I mention their competitor’s name, nor do they start spitting venom. “They have L’Oreal and Maybelline, and we have our Revlon and Wet ‘n’ Wild,” Tan says confidently. “Wet ‘n’ Wild had its biggest growth last year. Right now, there are more than 400 counters all over Malaysia as well as Singapore.”
Alliance Cosmetics’ history with Revlon has been an eventful one, albeit not a very long one. After 20 months of negotiations, Alliance Cosmetics finally acquired sole distributorship for Revlon on Oct 7, 2000, in Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore.
Silky, Alliance Cosmetics’ in-house brand of cosmetics. It’s a brand that was launched in January last year; a brand that they hope to be able to market throughout Southeast Asia. At the moment, the young brand has three categories — Silky Lips, Silky Care and Silky White — all neatly priced at RM10 and below.
“I knew absolutely nothing about cosmetics,” says Tan. “I just bought over the company [with a partner], looking at it as another business opportunity. We started out with two brands — Physician’s Formula [make-up] and Avene [body care]
The above are excerpt from The Edge
Tag: Cosmetic : Beauty
