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www.bellpackaginggroup.com
Sinem Sandıkçı Gökçen,
L’Oréal Turkey General Manager
In September 2021, you became the first Turkish and
female country manager in the history of L’Oréal Turkey.
First of all, congratulations. When you look back on
your career journey, in your opinion what were the most
important factors for your success?
I built my 22-year career within a single company, taking
responsibilities in many different business units and functions.
Today, I am happy to be the first Turkish and female country
manager in the history of L’Oréal Turkey, of which has a very
unique culture. I think that the main reason for my success
is meeting with a global brand like L’Oréal Group and taking
advantage of the equal opportunities offered to all employees.
One of the best examples on equality of opportunities to be
entrusted as a Turk to lead Turkey’s operation, which is one of
the TOP 20 strategically important countries.
On the other hand, as the L’Oréal Group, you have been
one of the best performing companies globally for years
among FMCG companies in the world. In your opinion
what is the secret of the success?
L’Oréal Group is leading the industry for over 100 years.
Beyond keeping up with the change, our company always
leads the change and sets the trends. Another parameter
behind the success is Group’s agile ability to analyze the
dynamics, culture, experiences and changing habits of
operating countries. In addition to this, I would like to point out
that L’Oréal Group is a “Beauty-Tech company”. The concept
of Beauty-Tech refers to the transformation of our Group into
a beauty-focused technology company. In order us to create
the unlimited and infinitely personalized beauty experience
of the future, we take advantage of all the opportunities of
technology and offer a beauty experience of the future for the
consumers. We make our consumers’ lives easier via digital
tools and building more meaningful relationships with them
on digital platforms. The importance given to technology also
shows itself in the applications we implement. We position
these applications under the umbrealla of Beauty-Tech
approach linked to the unlimited personalized concepts of the
future. We prioritize technology in all areas.
For a 113-year-old company to be defined as a digital company,
it must have science, entrepreneurship and innovation in its
DNA. At L’Oréal Group, digital transformation is growing and
developing day by day. The share of investment allocated to
R&D never decreases. We continue to invest in science and
R&D without any interruption.
What is the current place and role of L’Oréal Turkey within
the L’Oréal Group? Can you talk about your future plans
and strategic priorities?
Operation in Turkey is strategically very important within the
Group. We are one of the TOP 20 biggest countries of the
L’Oréal Group. Our contribution to the group is to ensure
the growth, to lead the innovations and to create the future
as developing a talent pool. Of course, being the head of a
company having such a strategic importance entails a great
responsibility. The importance of Turkey’s operation gives us
strength to implement our new term plans. In 2022, our top
priority is to implement the vision, “Create The Beauty That
Moves the World”, which is our sense of purporse. We position
3 main revolutions at the center of our strategy to make
it happen in a responsible, sustainable and inclusive way: the
Digital Revolution, the Green Revolution (sustainability) and
the Purposeful Brands Revolution.
We believe that the market will continue to grow dynamically
and our target is growing above the market at least 1.5-2
times. In line with this ambition, we invest on our human resources
priorities to improve our quality on workforce, invest
on marketing to make our consumers experience our innovations
in the most effective way and invest on technology/digital
and start-up collaborations to provide more value-added
services to our stakeholders. We will prioritize topics such as
new products powered by technology, digital services providing
personalization and a better beauty experience powered
by data, new digital marketing techniques, chatbots and
machine learning-enabled processes to establish deeper
connections with our consumers.
The other ambition is to be a company preferred not only
by our consumers but also by our employees and business
partners to increase heart shares. Our priorities are to reveal
the true potential of our country in both business and people
issues, and to increase our talent exports from Turkey to
the entire Group. Embed women’s empowerment, diversity,
equality and inclusion in every corner of our company, issues
such as the disabled ones, refugees, gender balance and new
generations are among our constant priorities.
Do you observe significant changes in consumer
preferences in the markets in which you operate after
the pandemic?
Consumers are much more conscious now, they are curious
about the story behind the product they buy, they examine the
product ingredients, and they look for the alternatives in detail
before purchasing. In a world where everyone is equalized after
the pandemic, the desire of our consumers to feel themselves
special has also increased. Offering personalized experiences
has become much more important for the brands to
meet increasing consumer expectations and strengthen their
bond with consumers. In addition, consumers have different
expectations from each touchpoint, and it is very important
to be able to offer the expected service and experience to the
customer in each channel.
As a Beauty-Tech company, we could react very quickly to
changing consumer behaviors. There are tremendous consumer
researches behind the creation of our products; It is very
valuable for us to listen to our consumers and understand their
expectations. We meet the demand of accelearating interest
on online shopping with the impactful amount of investments
on e-commerce. We are aware that the shopping is no longer
differentiated as online/offline for consumers and the importance
of providing an uninterrupted shopping experience. We
build our communication models by keeping the digital first.
In addition, purposeful brands that have value added societal
and the environmental impacts have a meaning in the hearts
of consumers. Especially Gen Z is very open to try new brands
and change the brands they use, so the brands working
on the projects for social responsibility and sustainability are
differentiated. Consumers remain loyal to brands that can empathize.
Our goal is to provide the best products along with
the best services, while making a positive contribution to the
society and the environment at the same time.
What kind of impacts do you think the rapidly developing
e-commerce will have on the cosmetics market and
product variety? How do these developments affect your
packaging choices?
It is a fact that retail has now evolved into a service rather
than a product. While digitalization is spreading out, habit of
physical shopping continues. Changing consumer behaviors
also prove this prediction. Today, if you want to gain young
consumers to your brand, you need to use digital marketing
tools along with a mobile first omni-channel strategy. With digital
transformation, brands offer an omni-channel customer
experience, which expresses a more integrated structure, and
highlight services and experiences that increase consumer
engagement. Brands keeping up and implementing this integration
get the significant share of the cake.
We foresee that the share of our online sales will reach up to
40% in the very near future. In line with this foresight, we try
to understand consumers’ expectations, the product specifities
they look for and their changing preferences to position
our innovative perspective at the heart of our business, using
technology, data and artificial intelligence as a leading Beauty-Tech
company. We digitalize beauty products and experiences
with technology and personalize them. Innovations based
on changing consumer and market dynamics, digitalization,
omni channel transformation and consumer engagement/experience
are the top priorities we are working on.
We believe that the e-commerce transformation taking place
will have a positive impact on packaging usage and preferences.
In particular, the expectations and demands of consumers,
who become more aware about packaging waste and
prefer e-commerce more, lead brands to recycle in packaging.
Could you please tell us about your projects about
climate change, protection of natural resources, and
sustainability on biodiversity, which you cover under the
program of “L’Oréal For the Future”?
We have innovative and bold commitments in our “L’Oréal For
the Future” sustainability programme.
About climate change;
• By 2025, we aim to become carbon neutral by increasing
energy efficiency in all sites and using 100% renewable
energy.
• By 2030, we aim to have implemented innovations to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions from the use of our products
by 25% on average and per finished product, compared to
2016.
• By 2030, we aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions related
to the shipment of our products by 50% on average and
per finished product compared to 2016.
• By 2030, we aim to reduce the direct emissions of our strategic
suppliers by 50% in absolute figures compared to
2016.
About water consumption;
• We will evaluate our formulas using the environmental testing
platform until 2030 to ensure that the formulas we develop
respect aquatic eco-systems both on the mainland and
coastal areas.
• For our consumers to reduce their water consumption related
to the use of our products by 25% on average and per
finished product compared to 2016; As a Group, we aim to
renew ourselves until 2030.
• We aim to recycle and reuse 100% of the water used in industrial
processes by 2030.
• By 2030, we aim to ensure that our strategic suppliers use
water resources in a sustainable way in all areas where they
operate.
About biodiversity;
• By 2030, 100% of the bio-based ingredients of our formulas
and packaging materials will be traceable and sourced from
sustainable sources. None of these will lead to the destruction
of forests.
• By 2030, we aim to have improved the land occupation,
which is important in terms of obtaining our ingredients in
order to reduce the negative effects on natural habitats,
compared to 2019.
• By 2030, 100% of our buildings used in our industrial sites
and operations will have a positive impact on biodiversity
compared to 2019.
Continuing to work with the aim of enabling 1.5 million consumers
to make more sustainable choices and raising their
awareness, Group has developed an “Environmental and Social
Impact Labeling System” to be used on its products. With
this innovative system, the environmental and social impacts
of our products will be shared transparently with consumers
on a scale ranging from A to E. The system, which will first be
used in Garnier hair care products and gradually in all brands
and categories, has been approved by independent scientific
experts and all data has been audited and certified by the independent
audit institution Bureau Veritas. These labels and
scores can be accessed from the web pages of our brands.
Can you also talk about your commitment to Giorgio
Armani’s Acqua For Life initiative and your support for
access to drinking water?
As you know, access to clean water is one of the biggest challenges
of this century. For 12 years, Giorgio Armani has been
running the Acqua For Life project to strengthen communities
by increasing access to drinking water. The project, realized
in cooperation with Unicef, WaterAid and water.org, has allocated
over 12 million Euros to date and reached 473 thousand
people in 21 countries. As an integral part of his commitment
to put the environment at the center of the brand, Giorgio Armani
also contributes to many important reforestation and
conservation projects.
Innovation and sustainability on packaging solutions are
the important subjects of today. How would you describe
the role of strategic suppliers such as Bell Packaging
Group (BPG) in this regard, what are your expectations?
The packaging is very critical on the road for a sustainable
world. At this point, both brands, suppliers and consumers
need to be conscious and devoted. Particularly, the contribution
and guidance of our strategic suppliers like you is very
important for the sector. As L’Oréal Group, we have determined
many commitments regarding packaging. In this context;
• By 2030, we will reduce the packaging density used in our
products by 20% compared to 2019.
• By 2030, 100% of the plastics used in packaging will be
obtained from recycled materials or from biologically based
sources. (We aim to reach 50% of this target by 2025.)
• By 2025, we will be obtaining 100% of our plastic packaging
from refillable, reusable, recyclable or biodegradable sources.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Bell Packaging
Group family for their contribution to our business and development.
We thank Ms. Sinem Sandıkçı Gökçen for participating to
our interview.
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