In an interview with Insights Success, Co-CEO of Flormar, Cem Senbay, shares insightful information about Flormar and its noteworthy contribution in the cosmetic industry. Founded in Milano, Italy the capital of the fashion industry, Flormar was acquired by the Şenbay Family in 1970 and began production in Turkey. In a short period of time the organization became an indispensable brand for women all over the world reaching yearly production of 120 million units with a wide range of products consisting of blushes, foundations, eye-shadows, mascaras, lipsticks, nail polishes, accessories, and skin care products.
Below are highlights from the interview conducted between Cem Senbay and Insights Success:
Give a brief overview of your company and its vision.
The name of our brand was inspired by the most powerful kind of love, the love for children. When the company was founded in 1950’s in Milan, the art & fashion capital of Italy, the founders created the word Flormar by merging the names of their two daughters, Floridita and Maria. That is why our relationship with our customers is close to the insightful friendship between a mother and a daughter, a very special and powerful bond.
Talking about makeup and not thinking about colors is nearly impossible. Since every woman uses colors differently for every mood or every occasion, colors are very important. Colors are very upfront in the makeup business but Flormar is different because we understand the importance of color. We know that we must always develop new colors and new ways to keep them alive through out time. Colors are, in a sense, Flormar’s heritage. That is why we say our brand’s essence is “Color Centricity”.
What are the cutting-edge products offered by Flormar?
With our rich product range, Flormar is always close to women, thinking about their every need from A to Z. Our focus and experience for our customers is very different from other makeup brands or retailers. Flormar is there from skin routine to the last touch of a perfume. We’re here to make women feel and look amazing.
Flormar always looks at makeup from a holistic point of view. That is also why we present all the makeup categories at once to our customers. For example, one of our most innovative products, Roll’n Go Liner, has round disc tip for easy application. This unique rolling disk experience helps women to draw straight lines easily. Innovation packaging and being one of the first brands to launch this product made us way ahead from our competitors. Another example, since all the longlasting liquid matte lipsticks have a drying effect on the lips we pushed ourselves to improve our formulas to create the most comfortable product. As a result our bestselling lip product, Silk Matte Liquid Lipstick was born. One of the main claims of the product is to provide silky yet long lasting matte look on the lips. We used an independent research company to interview our customers, which resulted in 99% of women agreeing to our products claim and performance. Last but definitely not least, the nail enamels. Nail enamels are our heritage, that is why we can say it is our first love. From our humble beginnings until now and even tomorrow, we are always proud to present more than 250 shades in the nail enamel category highlighting our expansive range of colors.
What are the special franchisee strengths that make Flormar unique from its competitors?
Flormar holds a unique business model where most of the makeup retailers are not able to compete. We are manufactures of our products and in fully control with our innovation, ingredients and quality. We innovate fast, flexible to local needs, and accessible for all markets around the world.
Generally, in a makeup store, you do not see every type of beauty products in one stop shop. Flormar changed this stereotype and began presenting a wide range of products to our customers in one, lovely and charming place: A Flormar Store.
Recently we developed a new retail concept with leading firms MAD and DIAM, which are specialized in creating unique concepts for cosmetic retailers. After each work we made, we created the most profitable structure both for the shopper and for the retailer. We always use the right product at the right place, in order to designate strategic products and their purpose to our customer.
Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learned that has shaped the journey of the company.
Flormar had humble beginning but eventually we managed to have our own fully automated factory. As a fast and ever growing powerful brand; Flormar is now proud to be a global company, having great relations with countless countries around the world.
Our hard work, professional attitude and determination, we reached our goals in a record-level time frame. With strong geo-cultural advantages, Flormar is always in the right place, at the right time. Flormar has always been lucky to work w_th strong and the best poss_ble partners _n the world. As I mentioned in the previous question, our main advantage is certainly being as fast as possible in every aspect. We innovate, produce, most importantly distribute very fast according to our local customer needs. The strength we get from our strong global partners, helps us to analyze and understand local needs of different markets allowing us to present the fastest solutions and offers possible. To exist both in domestic and foreign market is very important and crucial to Flormar, in a world of full globalization. There are 195 countries according to UN. We’re present in majority of them today from East to West; Flormar has reached almost 1.000 mono brand stores, in more than 110 countries.
In addition, we always try to keep up with the new trends around the world and we are proud to be one of the very few makeup brands that does it all. We work together with the best consultants that hold global influence in the makeup industry.
Give a detailed description of your contribution over the company and the industry.
There are two main ingredients in the makeup industry: Country of origin and claiming professionalism. Both these two aspects may cause average women to feel a bit frustrated. Why? Because she may feel exposed and benchmarked with unreachable beauty goddess such as an American supermodel or a French actress. On the other hand, she can feel stressed and even feel offended to shop because she thinks professional products are very far away from her knowledge in make up. We dedicate ourselves to tear down these two taboos. We will always pay close attention to our customers wants and needs. We want to make her feel like her best friend is giving her advise during her shopping experience at Flormar retail stores. We are always smiling, humble, and helpful to our customers just like their best friend.
Flormar is well aware that the cosmopolite character of Istanbul adds a lot to the dynamism and proactivity of Flormar. With the example of a city that connects Europe and Asia continents, Flormar gets together with its customers and strengthens the bond.
We develop our products at the expected quality while keeping our price range a very affordable level. And of course, we never give up on the innovation!
Where does the Flormar see itself in the long run and what are its future goals?
As a hospitable company culture, we want to keep the ‘best friend’ mental_ty going, because our values are important and they state where we stand as a company. The intimate feeling is always welcome and we do our best to make every woman feel good about herself.
Flormar will always continue to expand, to multiply in color and variety, to sparkle and to enchant with its every aspect. If I need to be more specific about our long-term sales goals, I can say that we challenge ourselves to double the company’s sales volume every three years.
