The Knowledge Issue 14 v2 - The King of Shaves Company Ltd

CHAIRMAN’S STATEMENTWith the merger of Gillette into Procter & Gamble (and also the introduction ofmale ranges from L’Oreal, Hugo Boss and Hackett following closely on fromthe Clarins Men and Shisheido Men launches), there is definitely a wave ofactivity sweeping through the male health and beauty market.These relatively large investments ($57bn in the P&G case) areobviously being made with a view to making a profitable returndown the line. There is an expectation that the male market willprovide the profitable growth required by these corporations ata time when the female beauty business is literally ageing andmaturing and thus slowing down.All this is good news for KMI. Investment by the major corporationsis helping to grow awareness of male grooming products amongstconsumers and retailers alike. In this marketplace King of Shaveshas again grown its market share to record levels and enjoys thehighest growth rates of all brands in the sector. Later on in spring,King of Shaves samples will be introduced packaged in with thenew “The RZR” line of razors and blades. This range will be availablethrough Boots stores at first.In the fragrance market there are signs that it is maturing andgrowth is slowing down. High levels of new product introductions,price discounting and much media hype are required for salesmaintenance by all brands in the market. Ted Baker fragrances,which KMI has developed since 1998, are performing well and thenew introductions, Second Skin and Take 3 have had a gooduptake.range of deodorants will appear in spring to complement the line.The brand’s overall growth in 2005 will be over 20%.I hope you enjoy the various articles which give more detail on eachof KMI’s brands and also on the various geographic regions weoperate in. We are looking forward to another great year in 2005and would like to thank all our business partners, suppliers and customersfor their hard work in supporting us.After 14 issues of The Knowledge in this format we are going tobe taking a new direction with the next issue out in the summer.First of all there will be a substantial new look to the overall companybranding introduced in the next issue – the first major changeof corporate identity since 1997. Then there will be a change of formatand direction for The Knowledge itself. Both of these changesare highly exciting and will bring more life into an already highlydynamic newsletter! We look forward to bringing you this – sowatch this space!And before anybody asks…the answer is, “No, the new identity andbranding did not cost us £75m!”Continued innovation in product and packaging will remain the keyin this area and KMI is looking forward to coming to market in 2005with a raft of gift and value sets to enhance our Ted Baker consumeroffering alongside the launch of Ted’s new fragrance forwomen, Second Scent.There is further scope to grow the Fish range of hair styling andbody maintenance products. Three more styling products and aHITEN DAYAL | CHAIRMAN | HITEN@SHAVE.COM