Sylvie Chantecaille on selling luxury beauty online without Amazon's help
Sylvie Chantecaille has no illusions about the commercial difficulties presented by the coronavirus pandemic. "Basically our business went dead overnight," she said of her eponymous prestige beauty company, Chantecaille, where she serves as president and CEO. And whereas her industry competitors anticipate a run back to stores once the world-spanning practices of social distancing soften, Chantecaille isn't so sure. "Before we could figure out 'Neiman's will buy this, Nordstrom will buy that, Saks will buy this.' Now we have no idea. We don't know what they're going to buy, if they can buy, if there's anyone to buy. And if they're going to be there!" Chantecaille said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. She added that the beauty business is now focusing on survival, and assumed that its revenue forecast for 2020 is down 30% (the company doubled its retail sales in 2018 to $200 million, and has grown since then, according to Chantecaille). At the same time, the company's forced focus on e-commerce has seen that side of the business mushroom. "We did last month the amount of money we do in six months normally," Chantecaille said. That focus concerns Asian markets in particular, where the company is working with KOLs in China and doing direct videos on Taobao. Chantecaille talked about how she considers Amazon "the death of retail," her ideas for Chantecaille's future product direction and how people want to wear makeup even just for video calls.