BEST IN CLASS, BEST IN INNOVATION AND BEST OF ALL — CANADIAN!

By Frank Turco

TAKE ONE PART CANADIAN; two parts iconic brands and family owned; and three parts innovative operations, R&D and sales - then mix them all together to get a beautiful formulation known as Groupe Marcelle Cosmetics.

Groupe Marcelle Cosmetics is the largest Canadian company in the beauty industry. Founded in 1949 in Quebec, Groupe Marcelle brings together 4 iconic brands: Watier, Annabelle, Marcelle, and CW Beggs & Sons to Canadian consumers through various retail and digital partners.

“Our mission is to bring great cosmetics to life effectively, profitably and safely,” says Jennifer Bedard Vice President of Sales. “We were the first brand recognized by the Canadian Dermatology Association’s Skin Health Program. We offer the most products under this certification and the only brand to offer colour under this certification.”

Groupe Marcelle Cosmetics credits much of its product success to its manufacturing facility. Led by Luc Simard, Vice President of Operations/R&D, the operations and research and development functions are busy mixing, formulating, testing and innovating every single day. Having recently improved to a more sophisticated and innovative Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) process, Groupe Marcelle Cosmetics has been able to interface the ideation stage (product briefs and ideas) through to developing the formulas and then into the ERP system. “It is very difficult to find people (labour) today and we needed to reduce the level of manual work,” says Luc Simard, “so we needed to digitize our systems and processes”. The overall process improvements allowed for a smoother link of all different functions from ideation to launch. “We took our market research and ideas and interfaced them with our supply/chain and operations responsible for setting the gate process, (or ‘funnel’ as Luc likes to call it), and ultimately delivered ideas and research to the consumer. We wanted to simplify how we make and design our products”. The operations of Groupe Marcelle Cosmetics needed to respond to the demand of consumers and they did just that.

Groupe Marcelle Cosmetics is unique in its history and philosophy of driving innovation, “As Canadians, we have proximity to the Canadian consumers’ needs, and also share those needs,” says Jennifer Bedard. “We are fortunate to be able to bring feedback from our sales representatives and beauty advisors across all channels of retail in Canada directly to our brands in Montreal to drive new ideas and innovation. We have the capacity and desire to engage with our dedicated Beauty Advisors.”

Along with a strong manufacturing and operations arm, Groupe Marcelle Cosmetics also has an “innovation team” embedded in its marketing function. The innovation team gathers all of the relevant market research and launch data, links it back with R&D to “prime the pump” as Luc says to create best in class products while never compromising on quality. And in an effort to ensure innovation is a top priority, a portion of products and raw materials are sourced from abroad, “Quality is always at the forefront of everything we do,” says Jennifer Bedard. “We recognize the need to include fabulous suppliers around the world to make our innovative products, and it is our price and quality that differentiates us in the market”. Groupe Marcelle Cosmetics has been able to turn new innovative products in as early as 9-12 months while ensuring all safety standards and protocols are being met. During the height of the pandemic, Groupe Marcelle interrupted production to manufacture sanitizer for sensitive skin to keep in line with the Marcelle skincare safety promise. Over and above that, they provided “care packages” to health care workers which included hand and face creams to deal with excessive mask wearing rashes and hand rashes from all the washing.

With the processes, people and products in place it’s no wonder that Groupe Marcelle Cosmetics continues to be in the top ranks of the beauty industry in Canada. Bien joué!