Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for waiting. At this time, we would like to welcome everyone to the Investor Day Natura. Today with us we have Mr. Roberto Marques, Executive Chairman of the Board of Natura &Company, Mr. José Filippo, Chief Financial Officer of Natura & Co, Mr. João Paulo Ferreira, CEO of Natura, Ms. Viviane Behar, Investor Relations Director of Natura & Co, Ms. Angela Cretu, Mr. David Boynton, and Michael O'Keeffe. This event is being recorded, and all participants will be in listen-only mode during the company's presentation.
After Natura's remarks are completed, there will be a question- and- answer session. At that time, further instructions will be given. We have simultaneous translation into Portuguese, and questions may be asked normally by participants connect from abroad, either in English or Portuguese. Should any participant need assistance during this call, please press star zero to reach the operator. We have a simultaneous webcast that may be accessed through Natura's IR website, www.natura.net/investor. The slide presentation may be downloaded from this website. There will be a replay facility for this call on the website after the end of the event.
This presentation may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements are not statements of historical fact and reflect the beliefs and expectations of Natura &Co' s management.
This presentation also includes adjusted information prepared by the company for information and reference purposes only, which have not been audited. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and the company does not undertake any obligation to update them in light of new information or future developments. Now, I will turn the conference over to Mr. Roberto Marques, Executive Chairman of the Board of Natura & Co. The floor is yours.
Good afternoon to everybody, and thank you for joining us for this virtual Investor Day. I'm Viviane Behar, Investor Relations Officer for Natura &Co. I hope all of you and those dear to you are all safe and sound. This Investor Day is not taking place exactly as we planned. The original plan was to host you in our head office in NASP in São Paulo, of course, that became impossible with the recent events. This will be our first Investor Day since the acquisition of Avon, we believed it was important to maintain this event to update you on how we have responded to the COVID-19 crisis, and also to share our roadmap of our purpose-driven group.
I'm delighted to be joined on this call by our Executive Chairman and Group CEO, Roberto Marques, and by the four CEOs of our businesses, João Paulo Ferreira, CEO of Natura & Co LatAm, Angela Cretu, CEO of Avon, David Boynton, CEO of The Body Shop, and Michael O'Keeffe, CEO of Aesop. Our CFO of Natura & Co, José Filippo, is also with us. Our agenda is as follows: Roberto will start with some introductory remarks. Filippo will summarize our Q1 results. JP, Angela, David, and Michael will then take you through their respective businesses. After Roberto's concluding remarks, we will then open the floor to you for a Q&A session. Without further ado, let me now hand over to Roberto. Roberto, please.
Thank you, Viviane. Good afternoon to everyone. I hope this finds you and your family safe and well. As Viviane mentioned, this Investor Day is taking place in unusual circumstances and in an unusual form as a result of COVID-19 pandemic that is affecting all of us. It is clearly a defining moment. If there was ever a moment to be a purpose-driven company, that moment is now. As you know, Natura &Co has the aspiration of being not only the best beauty company in the world, but to be the best beauty company for the world. A company that acts not just for its shareholders, but for the whole and the society in which we operate.
This past quarter has been a time to put those principles into action, and I can say without a doubt that Natura & Co as a company, its associates, consultants, representatives, and business partners have risen to the occasion. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their engagement and commitment over the past two months. We are proud and thankful to all of them. This is clearly a time to care. Care for our people, for our communities, and for our company. For our people, first and foremost, Natura has gone through a series of actions that go beyond recommendations from public health authorities for social distance, in which we actually anticipated.
We ensure job security for 60 days, with retail staff on paid leave or holidays, extended flexible credit conditions to our consultants and representatives, set up an emergency fund for consultants or representatives directly or indirectly affected by COVID-19, and even provided telemedicine for both associates and consultants. Second, for our communities. We did this by putting our facilities to use to produce what is today the best line of defense against COVID-19, short of a vaccine.
Soap and hand sanitizer. We retool our brand across the group to turn out these essential products on a larger scale, with a 30% increase in production across all brands. We have seen sales of hand sanitizer rise by over 500% in many of our businesses. We took advantage of underutilized capacity at Avon plants to produce hand sanitizer gel for Natura. We expect to produce 16 million units of alcohol gel and 1 million liters of alcohol with partners, primarily direct to donations.
Donations of personal products have totaled over 10 million units to date. The Avon Foundation donated over $1 million in support of the campaign against domestic violence, a topic that is very dear to all of our businesses and brands. We act on a coordinated effort to try to help break the cycle. Last but not least, care for our company. The past few weeks have been very challenging, but a t Natura & Co, our multi-channel model has shown its resilience. Social selling has been an answer to social distance. Digital took up a very important role as most of our stores closed across the globe.
We launched, for instance, a digital and interactive essential items sales catalog that can be shared over instant messaging tools and social media. Our consultants and representatives show remarkable adaptability. Total group e-commerce sales grew nearly 250% in the last few weeks versus prior year. At The Body Shop, the growth was around 300%, and Aesop almost 500%. At Natura and Avon combined, the growth was 150%, fueled by consultants sharing their online stores.
At Avon International, representatives increased adoption of digital assets from low single digits in 2019 to over 37% in recent weeks, which shows great opportunity to continue to accelerate the adoption of those tools. Sales via representatives sharing the e-brochure grew 85% at Avon globally in recent weeks. In U.K. itself, it was up fivefold versus last year. At Natura, over 90% of consultants already use digital assets, while content sharing grew by 64%, and the number of orders doubled in the 700,000+ online consultant stores.
We also took several steps to protect cash and liquidity, such as reducing operating expenses, limiting CapEx to essential projects, renegotiating rents, freezing new hires, and cutting executive pay voluntarily across all companies. We have a comfortable and strong financial position, with over BRL 4 billion in available cash and no significant debt maturity until September 2021. We also strengthened our balance sheet and enhanced our liquidity through two very important steps. First, to improve our capital structure, we are raising an additional BRL 1 billion-BRL 2 billion through a private placement subscribed to by Natura founding shareholders and other investors and minority shareholders.
Second, we have raised BRL 750 million through one-year promissory notes, which do not impact our net debt. Those two moves give us greater financial flexibility to navigate the current turbulence. Filippo will provide some more details later on. Yes, there's been a challenging time and year for Natura & Co but Natura &Co has proven its resilience and adaptability, and I have confidence that we will emerge even stronger from this crisis and better prepared to address a different consumption environment.
On this next slide, I would like to tell you how we're going to grow when we emerge from the crisis. In summary, we have four main growth drivers in the medium term. The first is flawless execution. We have already shown that by exceeding the target we set for EBITDA margin at The Body Shop, which reached 11.3% in 2019 on an adjusted base excluding the transformation cost, which is 370 basis points above 2017. Flawless execution also means leveraging the scale of our group in such areas as procurement.
If you all recall, we had set a target of BRL 420 million in procurement gains over three years. I'm very pleased to report today that two years later, we are already at 97%, and we'll continue on this efficiency path. Our second growth driver is capturing synergies at Avon. As we told you when we closed the acquisition four months ago, we see tremendous upside potential at Avon and t he first few months of integration have only reinforced this belief.
Both Angela and JP have identified numerous growth opportunities and efficiency gains. Today, I'm pleased to announce that we have raised our target synergies to between $300 million-$400 million annually, including now top-line synergies coming from Latin America of between $90 million-$120 million, and also further cost synergies at Avon International. I will detail this a bit more on the next slide. Our third priority is digital, and here we plan to double down. I told you about the remarkable growth we have seen in digital in the past couple of months, and there is no turning back.
JP had already had the opportunity at past Investors Day to present to you Natura's digital transformation, which is continuing to progress, with over 95% of our consultants using our digital platform, and roughly 700,000 consultants' virtual stores on Rede Natura, a 40% increase versus last year. Avon has huge potential to replicate this model, and this is a key priority for the business and the brand. The Body Shop and Aesop are also becoming increasingly multi-channel, not just by necessity, as we have seen in the past month, but also in a strategic design to accelerate growth.
As an example, capitalizing on Natura's relationship selling experience, The Body Shop at Home has grown by 61% in this past quarter. Aesop as well has seen incredible growth in digital in the past few weeks. Finally, our fourth growth driver is accelerating top-line growth in white spaces in all of our business. Each one of our brands has an avenue to explore. The Body Shop is considering The Body Shop at Home in North America as a vector to growth, as well as China through Tmall. Aesop is also expanding in China through Tmall, but also evaluating other possible avenues.
For Avon and Natura, Latin America offers numerous growth opportunities, and Natura can piggyback on Avon infrastructure to expand. We know there will be a time when COVID-19 doesn't dominate all the headlines, and Natura &Co is preparing to growth and as activity resumes in a more normal way. As I mentioned, we are raising our total target synergies from the Avon acquisition to between $300 million and $400 million, an increase of $100 million. There are two synergy drivers. The first is cost, and back in January, we unveiled our target of a range between $200 million and $300 million annually.
The synergies will be largely achieved across the Brazil and Latin American footprint and can be broken down into three major buckets. The first of those is sourcing, which should generate annual synergies between $85 million- $115 million at current exchange rates. As you know, procurement is already one of the main areas of synergies within Natura &Co, and we see strong potential to enhance that through optimized purchasing of raw materials, freight, and warehousing, advertising, and catalog, as well as back office functions.
The second bucket is manufacturing and distribution, where we see synergies between $50 million- $70 million. We will achieve this by optimizing our distribution center footprint, reducing the complexity of our overall plant organization, and consolidating such activity as cargo, thus improving service level to our consultants and representatives. Administrative expenses are another opportunity for cost savings between $75 million- $90 million, through better integration of areas such as IT, data centers, and network, as well as some supporting functions.
On top of these cost synergies, we now expect between $90 million-$120 million in top-line synergies, mostly from Natura &Co LatAm, and JP will describe them shortly. We anticipate one-time costs of $190 million to achieve the full range of those synergies. On the right side of the slide, you can see our timeline to achieve the full range of synergies, which are 100% achieved by the end of 2024. We're also providing a timeline for the cost to achieve the synergies, which approximate amounts for each year.
As I mentioned in January, when we closed the acquisition, synergies are obviously one of the catalysts of this transaction, driven by a powerful industrial logic, but they are not a goal in itself. Rather, they are a means to free up resources that can be reinvested in core capabilities that will accelerate our top-line growth. For us, the combination of Natura and Avon is clearly a growth combination. Let me now hand over to Filippo, and I'll return for some concluding remarks.
Good afternoon to everyone. As you know, we presented our Q1 results this morning. I would like to quickly give you an overview of the consolidated headline sales and EBITDA numbers, and then show you a snapshot of some cash balance sheet and net debt considerations. Let me start on the first slide with our consolidated net revenue, which reached BRL 7.5 billion in Q1. This represents growth of 1.9% in BRL. In constant currency, net revenue was down 6.2%, excluding currency effects in the quarter. Looking at sales by business, Natura &Co LatAm was up 2.4% in BRL, with very strong growth by Natura, both in Brazil and in Hispanic Latin America.
While Avon, sales in the region were down 7.1%. Sales at Avon International were down 2.4% in Brazilian reals and a reduction in representatives and the COVID-19 impact later in the quarter. This was partially offset by an improved price mix combination across most markets. The Body Shop sales were up 2.6% in Brazilian reals. Growth was solid in the early part of the year, was then impacted by store closures as lockdown measures took hold. The Body Shop was able to partially offset this with strong e-commerce sales. Finally, Aesop continued its strong double-digit growth trajectory, with sales up 26.6% in Brazilian reals.
Here, also with a growing contribution from online, which was up over 500% in recent weeks. On the following slide, we turn to consolidated adjusted EBITDA, which stood at BRL 571.5 million in Q1. This excludes three effects. First, non-recurring Avon-related acquisition costs of BRL 298.3 million. Second, a non-cash, non-recurring purchase price allocation effect of BRL 102.9 millioN resulting from the fair market value assessment of Avon, which reflects a step up in inventory value in the cost of goods sold.
Finally, transformation costs at Natura &Co LatAm and Avon International for BRL 25.1 million . Adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter was 7.6%, down 220 basis points. On a reported basis, EBITDA was BRL 145.3 million . Let me now turn to our balance sheet on its final slide. We have a strong cash position with BRL 4.6 billion in cash at the end of the quarter. As Roberto mentioned in his opening remarks, in the current environment, we have taken two additional steps to further strengthen our cash structure and our liquidity through capital raising and new financing.
We are continuing to deleverage Natura Cosméticos, and at the end of Q1, the net debt to EBITDA ratio was down to 2.7x , versus 2.95x at the end of the same quarter last year. We are continuing to work towards the target of reducing Natura Cosméticos' leverage to the pre-The Body Shop acquisition level of 1.4x by 2021. At Natura &Co Holding, consolidated net debt to EBITDA stood as 4.91x and at 3.84x , adjusted for non-recurring transaction costs and PPA impact on EBITDA. Please note that the indebtedness ratio at the holding company level would not be considered for financial covenant purpose in June 2020. After this quick financial overview, let me now hand over to JP to present Natura &Co LatAm. Thank you very much. JP, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Filippo, and hello, everyone. Good to be with you today, even if it's only virtually. At our previous Investor Days, I spoke to you as the CEO of Natura. Today, I'm here as the CEO of Natura &Co Latin America, the new business unit we created after the closing of the Avon acquisition, and that is tasked with overseeing the development of all four of our brands in the region, Avon, Natura, The Body Shop, and Aesop.
It has been an amazing experience to begin leading the transformation and integration of four iconic brands into a multi-brand, multi-channel group. The more I experience it, the bigger is the growth potential I see ahead. Natura &Co Latin America is more than just welcoming a new brand, a new business to our family. Adding Avon makes us a powerhouse, the number one CFT player in the region, as measured by Euromonitor. We have gained in scale, in revenue, in capabilities. We are now an even larger network, present in 17 countries with net revenue of almost BRL 5 billion in 2019. More than 4 million consultants and representatives, 18,000 employees, more than 600 stores, and 1.5 billion units sold last year.
In the last four years, Natura gained momentum in Latin America with the high growth of our Hispanic operations and the very successful turnaround implemented in Brazil. We are now the preferred brand in four of the six markets in which we operate directly in the region. That's the story that we will work to repeat with Avon in the coming years, expanding our leadership in the region even further, combining forces to accelerate growth. We started the integration of the businesses at the beginning of the year, and at the same time, we worked hard to make it smooth. The world was hit by its biggest challenge in the past several decades, the coronavirus pandemic.
As a society, we face today possibly the most challenging time of our lives. Natura &Co established very clear commitments to face this crisis, always having in mind the essence of our brands and of our companies and the purpose of the group we're building. Taking care of our people is our highest commitment. Across Latin America, we have guaranteed to our employees job security for at least 60 days. We offered telemedicine for employees, consultants, representatives, and franchisees. We invested in social support to our consultants and representatives and campaigned against domestic violence.
Finally, we donated soaps and alcohol to health authorities and NGOs across the entire region. Now, with the same passion dedicated to our people, we worked to keep the health of our business. Natura &Co supplies essential products, which were even more demanded during this period. This allowed us to keep the business running in most countries, with a few exceptions where our operations were partially restricted, as you may see on the map. At the same time, we implemented a cost reduction and cash optimization program, redefining priorities and optimizing spending.
We have also reinvested in more flexible payment terms for consultants, representatives, and franchisees, helping to maintain their business active. Most of all, we were able to react fast and seize opportunities that accelerated our digitalization strategy, making it easier for consultants and reps to sell online while staying safely at home. As you know, Natura has already embarked on a far-reaching digital transformation that we presented at last year's Investor Day. The digital capabilities already in place in Natura and in Avon enable us to respond extremely fast to the unfolding situation.
Online sales, considering e-commerce and consultants' online stores, gained tremendous momentum in April, with some operations growing more than 500%. Worth highlighting that this amazing acceleration was not restricted to Natura, but happened also in Avon through the Avon Connect stores, where available, and in The Body Shop, where franchisees were enabled to operate their online stores leveraging Natura's platform. Our consultants, digitally empowered, remained active, keeping their income, even though they had to stay at home. To increase their adoption of the social selling tools, entry barriers were reduced, incentives and training increased.
As a consequence, Natura reached almost 1 million digital stores, while the pace of new openings accelerated more than 70% at Avon in the last month. You may also know that content sharing is a powerful fuel for any social network, and our platforms and apps allow tailored content to be generated, allow also access to a library of predefined posts, virtual brochures, and interactive catalogs that can be shared through different channels. Our network is clearly enjoying those features, as you can judge by the high number of Natura's consultants and the growing number of Avon's representatives engaged into that activity.
Finally, as one would expect, those efforts help bringing new customers. At Natura Brazil alone, the monthly acquisition of new online customers grew by more than 700%, mostly attracted by our own consultants. Much of this was possible because we were leveraging strong existing capabilities. The story of our relationship selling digital omni-channel transformation journey is familiar to many of you by now. Our new commercial model, launched in 2017, has now completed 14 consecutive quarters of increasing consultant productivity.
We diversified the shopping experiences offered to different shopper profiles in different shopping occasions by opening almost 70 own stores and more than 400 franchise stores, an opportunity that we offer exclusively to the most productive consultants in our network. Additionally, we also operate more than 150 The Body Shop stores in the region, as well as one Aesop store in Brazil. Finally, our consultant online stores have been successfully implemented in Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Peru. We also took an important step in our internationalization plan, launching our first operation in Asia in partnership with the head franchisee from The Body Shop in Malaysia, a model that combines social selling, retail, and e-commerce.
As regards the digitalization of our business, our online platform is now being used by almost 90% of our network in Latin America, with new tools added every week. We continue to invest in offering new beauty and wellbeing services to increase the value proposition we offer to consultants using technologies that enrich the customer experience. We strive to make their journeys easier, and I would like to update you on the most recent progresses with a video. The advances of the last years have been guided by a clear vision for our business. We are connecting individuals that compose our extended network to our portfolio of brands through services, products, and content.
Our Bem Estar Bem ecosystem was born aiming to connect our many touchpoints, from consumers to consultants and reps, from content creators to logistics service providers to make our value proposition even more attractive. With Avon in our family of brands, we have added to this vision an enlarged network, new capabilities, a committed and passionate team, and a range of excellent products to fulfill the needs of different buyer profiles. No doubt, the arrival of Avon will create enormous value for all stakeholders in the coming years.
As I already disclosed, there will be relevant core synergies to be obtained with intergration in areas such as procurement, manufacturing and distribution. I C an assure you, our teams are already on the ground working to guarantee flawless execution, even during the pandemic. Now the cost synergies give us the confidence and the resources to unlock yet another source of value, revenue synergies, revenue growth. I would like to share with you now some details on these top-line synergies that this combination will bring. As we combine Natura and Avon's capabilities in Latin America, consider three different buckets, three waves that will unlock incremental revenues.
Wave 1 is all about Avon's turnaround in the region. We're all aware that the brand has been following a declining trend in the last years yet Avon has extremely valuable assets, passionate people, innovative, good quality, and affordable products, a great brand awareness, a vast network of reps, and an amazing household penetration. What we need is to fix channel and portfolio fundamentals, very much like we did with Natura itself a few years ago. This wave represents some 40% of the value to be created and defines a solid ground on which to build the other two waves.
Wave 2 focuses on exploring the penetration that both brands already have in households throughout the region. Driving cross and up-selling through our consultants and reps. Finally, for that wave, we estimate some 50% of the top-line synergies. Finally, Wave 3 will take the Natura brand to new markets in Latin America, where Avon, working as the host, will reduce the entry costs and accelerate growth. This should account for the remaining 10% of the synergies. As you can see, this is all about the collaboration between brands, exploring the power of the co. Let me provide more details behind those waves.
Avon's turnaround was the main objective of the Open Up program, which continued to be improved, as Angela will discuss with you later. In Latin America, we see significant opportunities to accelerate this transformation by focusing on structural improvements in channel management and in the strategy of the categories. As regards the channel, we have outlined an action plan that involves segmentation and progression to increase the lifetime value of reps. This will help make bigger reps more productive while reducing the churn of the smaller ones andt That recipe we know well.
We will run two pilots in important markets this year, aiming to a full-scale rollout in the beginning of 2021. We are also redefining the brands' and categories' architecture to increase unit volumes, channel activity, and profitability. For both fronts, we have identified quick wins that will be implemented throughout this year in areas such as pricing, the elimination of commercial bad practices, the alignment of sales field incentives, and the revision of campaign planning.
The next wave will build on the overlap of our networks to enrich the consumer's basket with products from our combined portfolio. Right after the closing, we presented that 2/3 of the households penetrated by one of our brands in Latin America is not yet penetrated by the other. As we sharpen the complementarity of our brands and categories, we will also build commercial stimuli to our consultants and representatives. We have already cross-referenced those databases and segmented the network based on their commercial behavior, from the most productive brand-exclusive ones to the small, low-frequency brand-overlapped ones.
For each group, different incentive schemes and reduction of barriers, such as credit and logistics, will be built using a common digital platform, leveraging data and analytics. Silent tests will be run this year to calibrate elasticities and the effectiveness of different policies, aiming at a progressive rollout later in 2021. The third wave will leverage Avon's footprint to grow Natura in new geographies, and we already have a great opportunity here in Latin America. Just by entering the nine markets in which Avon is already present and Natura is not, as you can see on the graph, we will already unlock a new market worth $5.4 billion.
By building on the Malaysian pilot and on Avon's footprint, we will be able to speed up Natura's geographic expansion, gaining market share twice as fast as we did in previous organic entry into new markets. In summary, the combination of our four brands in Latin America created a powerhouse in the beauty industry that enabled Natura &Co not only to defend, but actually to expand its regional leadership in the coming years. We are confident that with the elements presented here, not to mention the significant growth potential of The Body Shop and of Aesop in the region in which we didn't cover today, we are very well- positioned for that journey. Now I would like to invite Angela Cretu to talk about her plans for Avon. Angela, please go ahead.
Thank you, JP. Good afternoon. I'm honored to be speaking to all of you today. Just a few months ago, this wasn't the way I expected to meet you all. I wanted to start by sending you my warmest wishes and hope that you are all staying safe and well. On my first slide, let me tell you a little bit more about Avon and what we stand for. We are the original relationship-selling company with a legacy of almost 135 years of beauty and empowering women. Avon International covers 50 markets in EMEA and Asia, and we partner with 3.7 million beauty representatives. We have a brand awareness of 98%, and we are number one in beauty direct selling and in the top three brands across color, skincare, and fragrance in our major markets.
Avon, it's more than just a beauty brand. For us, beauty is the journey and women's empowerment is a destination. With this purpose at heart, we have contributed over $1 billion to women's causes. We supported the fight against breast cancer and against domestic violence. Our business model has created opportunities for women to earn and learn while sharing beauty with their friends. We help them succeed in their own way and on their own terms. We've been addressing environmental challenges as well as the social ones by ending animal testing, now tracking for 100% sustainably sourced paper in 2020.
Part of Natura &Co family, we aim to have even bigger impact on women and on the world at large going forward. Turning onto the next slide, I would like to give you an update at how we are navigating through this coronavirus times. Let me start with people first. We quickly enabled remote working for all our eligible employees. We allowed our frontline teams to continue making, packing, and shipping our products wherever that was possible. We've donated more than 400,000 units of products, and along with funds to support our communities, and understanding the increase of domestic violence during coronavirus home isolation, we committed $1 million in grants to domestic violence support groups around the world.
We are focused on protecting our representative earnings and meeting our customers' needs by keeping Avon open for business. Therefore, we increased our production on essential items in line with the demand, and we doubled down on our digital social selling channels. With a high-touch service in a now no-touch environment, we have enabled our representatives to continue to connect with their customers digitally. By quickly adjusting our logistics, we succeeded just in a matter of weeks to create a direct delivery to our representatives' customers on their behalf in 25 markets already, and we continue adding markets in the weeks to come.
We've seen a significant shift in the adoption and the engagement with our digital tools. The contribution of the online sales has increased already more than four times from January to April to more than 8% and t hat happened via WhatsApp brochure that grew by 469% and e-commerce sales that grew by 850% over the same period of time. Equally, we are taking decisive actions to protect our liquidity and cash and safeguard our business profitability. We are prioritizing critical spend and delaying cash-related investments. We are making use of government aid wherever possible and continuing to monetize non-core assets.
I'm really proud of how everyone has united during this time. We've seen amazing teamwork, creativity, and agility. With every challenge that we tackled, we discovered a new seed of opportunity. I'm confident that with all these learnings, we shall emerge even stronger. On the next slide, you can see our Open Up & Grow strategic framework. We started our Open Up strategic turnaround almost two years ago. While we strengthen our cost base and financial resilience, the revenue hasn't yet picked up. With rich learnings that we have had from both our previous experience at Avon and now from Natura's turnaround, our new enabling leadership team has created, in partnership with all of our markets, a next chapter of our transformation journey. We called it Open Up & Grow.
We aim to accelerate our transformation to regain Avon's relevance and reignite growth. We start with the how. We want to enable a new culture with purpose at heart and people as multipliers. When it comes to purpose, we want to make our voice heard again at all touchpoints, remobilizing our purpose, inspiring advocacy and engagement in our representatives, employees, consumers, and making an even more tangible and visible impact in each community where we do business.
For our people, we aim to provide meaningful career experience, empowering and enabling each of them to multiply the impact of our co-created strategy. We'll continue Open Up & Grow by accelerating three key levers: optimizing our commercial model and relationship selling framework, amplifying our brand and innovation relevance, and significantly expanding our digital presence and access cross-channels at all touchpoints. All of this must be underpinned by a growth-enabling model, a simpler, leaner operating model that will release resources to reignite growth and sustain a healthier, profitable business going forward.
Let's take a closer look at relationship selling on the next slide. We have different models currently in our portfolio, and many of them are still overly complex and too focused on short-term transactions and really not competitive as a long-term value proposition for our diverse representative segments. We aim to move to a simpler relationship-selling framework, open for all, with a compelling segmented experience for our representatives. We want to create a clear and competitive earnings model playbook for all our markets, and we will build a rewarding career growth plan and focus on building long-term relationships and driving lifetime value.
This will be enabled by a fit-for-growth sales organization and field management processes to provide the support and resources needed to improve engagement and retention. Turning to the next slide, we talk about opening up value. We shall drive reappraisal of our brand, simplification of our portfolio, and relevance for all customers with three bold initiatives that are aimed to be launched already in the second half of this year. Our new campaign positioning and visual identity will refresh the Avon brand. We look to a brand campaign that is more modern, more relevant, and bolder. It positions Avon as the one you didn't see coming, but now you can't look away.
We'll use our relationship selling model as our competitive advantage, and with our representatives being influencers at scale, as brand ambassadors, sharing content and reaching customers across all touch points, and in this way, grow the penetration with new and lapsed customers. Equally, we have reviewed our portfolio to prioritize our core brands like Avon Makeup, Care, and New Hero Fragrances, while allowing flexibility to tap into the trends and emotional categories based on the consumer mindset.
We are rebalancing our portfolio across all price points to ensure we meet our customer needs from value to premium, and we continue to reduce our sales of line by another 30% to create a simpler, cleaner portfolio architecture. We will optimize and simplify innovation by category to drive demand and representative earnings. Third pillar is winning stores. We aim to create a relevant, gratifying, and addictive shopping experience at all touch points for our customers, from print brochure to digital.
We are harmonizing our campaign cycle to create an even more relevant selling and shopping experience, and we'll boost it daily with exciting digital activations. We'll elevate the look and the feel of our brochure to more of a beauty magazine aesthetics with a better brand narrative, clearer navigation, more on-trend beauty ideas. We will use cutting-edge analytics to reach more customers and drive more spend. Open up access. Turning on the next slide, you will see that we look to enable 360-day selling opportunity through digital tools for our representatives and customers, and an omni-channel experience for all.
In addition to the elevated printed beauty magazine, there will be more frequent digital brochures, allowing us to react even more quickly to the trends and seasonality and stimulating additional orders. We have developed a digital toolkit allowing our representatives to run their business online, from recruiting to selling, from training to accessing content and sharing within their communities. With all our representatives already placing their orders online, we aim now to accelerate the adoption of the entire e-suite of tools and significantly growing their online presence and digital selling and encouraging them to share beauty with their social networks.
We continue improving our digital platforms and representative adoption as key strategic focus now and going forward. My final slide shows how will we sustain, Open Up & Grow with resources to reignite our brand, commercial model, and digital access while ensuring a sustainable, profitable value proposition for all our stakeholders. Firstly, a lean and agile operating model. We are rewiring and refitting the organization at all levels, starting with the top of the house to respond faster to market dynamics and enabling a cultural local empowerment and ownership while leveraging at scale all relevant assets and expertise within Avon and across the group.
Second, we are redesigning our S&OP and embedding new tools to radically improve the forecasting and planning processes to gain agility in responding to market trends, a better service level for our representatives, and improved inventory management. Finally, we'll maximize synergies. We have dedicated work streams to identify, map, and tackle revenue and cost synergies to deliver more value to all our stakeholders. I'm very excited with the combined power of the Natura &Co brands, and I'm really looking forward to advancing our work in maximizing the impact of our co-creation and collaboration. While we have just started this chapter, I'm confident we'll return Avon to growth.
Even within this current unprecedented trading climate, we are seeing green shoots as we make bold decisions and take action. I will end my presentation by saying I am privileged to be part of Avon for more than 20 years, and I'm more inspired than ever about our future, our purpose in this world as part of Natura &Co family. Thank you for listening to me today. Now I would like to hand over to David Boynton to The Body Shop presentation.
Hello, everyone. I'm David Boynton, and it's a great pleasure to spend some time with you today to update you on the transformation of The Body Shop and share more detail with you about our reaction to the COVID-19 crisis and how we're seeing the future. Last year, we talked about the five pillars of our transformation plan and explained how those pillars were underpinned by a fresh focus on embedding sustainability in everything we do. I'm delighted to say that 2019 was another good year for The Body Shop. We made lots of progress, and I'll walk you through a few of the highlights.
The key to unlock the future success of The Body Shop is the rejuvenation of the brand. 2019 saw the development of a new top-to-toe verbal and visual identity system, building on the new brand platform of empowering radical bodies that we shared with you last year. This VVIS touches every aspect of how the brand shows up to the outside world, from the look and feel of our stores, our product packaging, and how we express our point of view in our customer communications and activism. Aside from reinventing the experience our stores deliver, we've continued our progress in improving the quality of our store portfolio.
As we've closed unprofitable stores and made better choices in opening new ones, we've seen a much better performance in store profitability. We continue to see stores as a critical part of our distribution strategy. We know how to operate them effectively, and this channel is highly experiential and an efficient way to recruit new customers. Stores aren't our only focus. From the very beginning, we've adopted an omni-channel mindset, and we've seen real progress. This example here is of the U.K., where we focus on three complementary channels, growing our sales even as we reduce discount, and with the store channel holding up well even in difficult trading conditions.
Anita Roddick was a true pioneer, and The Body Shop always stood for a better way of doing business. She spoke often about business as a force for good, and we've taken that as our inspiration as we get more ambitious for TBS within the Natura &Co family. Last year, we set out to become B Corp- certified. I'm delighted to say that we achieved that in what B Lab told us was record time. This rigorous audit gives us a detailed understanding of where we are today and shows how we can improve.
We've also embarked on a bold new way to help the plastic crisis, embarking on a fresh approach to sourcing plastic for recycling from the waste pickers of India, and by introducing, in a bit of a blast from the past, a new recycling concept in our Bond Street Store that we intend to roll out globally. That's an overview of our ongoing transformation journey, but we aren't operating in a vacuum. Of course, we've needed to react to the global COVID-19 pandemic. As the virus spread around the world, in no time at all, we had to start closing stores, and at one point had closed 90% of company stores around the world. We were, in fact, a retail business with no retail stores to trade.
As this unfolded, we quickly pivoted to three new objectives to protect the company. The three objectives were, firstly, to stop all spending except in business-critical areas. The second was to recover at least 50% of the lost retail store sales through our e-commerce sites and The Body Shop At Home. Now, many of you know that the e-commerce business at The Body Shop has been historically underdeveloped, and share of business in most markets is well under 10%. We're also in the middle of the implementation of a new website, so this challenge was a tall order.
The third objective was around the aftermath, how to recover quickly and figure out how to get back on track. I'm pleased to say we acted fast and have seen encouraging results in our e-commerce business. As stores closed, e-commerce sales more than tripled. As you'd expect, our product mix has skewed towards wash and hygiene products with the hand category, for example, now at 10% of sales up from 4%. There's been some excellent trends in the At Home channel, too.
We changed from shipping to our consultants and went instead direct to their customers to be able to protect the business during lockdown. The performance in the U.K. and in Australia are both looking very encouraging, and we had our best-ever month in the history of the U.K. in April, better even than peak last year. We started a plan to accelerate the rollout of this channel, and I'll touch on that later. Shipping directly to The Body Shop At Home customers and tripling e-commerce revenues with an unexpected category mix has put pressure on the supply chain. When you add in that we've introduced social distancing programs to keep our people safe, this has had an initial 50% reduction in productivity.
We quickly ran into challenges with service levels and availability. I'm delighted to say the teams responded magnificently. We've managed to get a temporary warehouse up and running in just 15 days and expect to return to normal service levels by this weekend. This means we'll be in a position to significantly ramp up volumes in the weeks ahead. From the start, we've been clear that this isn't only about protecting our business, it's about serving our communities, too.
We've paid attention to finding ways to help and make positive contributions to healthcare professionals in the markets we serve. So far, we've donated more than 1 million pieces of product to hospitals in the countries where we operate. We've also partnered with our group brands to be shining a light on the problem of domestic violence during the lockdown period. The initial focus has been what you would expect from us. We've cut costs and doubled down on our remaining revenue-driving channels but w e're also thinking about the future and what happens next, how we get our stores back open and prepare to deliver a strong Christmas.
We're challenging ourselves to find ways to get back to where we expected to be at the end of 2022. We're sharpening our transformation approach and making sure we act on the lessons we're learning today about how to go faster, how to ensure that our activist voice gets heard, making sure that we challenge ourselves even further on what a right-sized store portfolio could look like in the years ahead. The whole business has seen the power of taking an omni-channel approach, and this will make change easier as we roll out our new website and extend our At Home platform.
We're seeing the future for The Body Shop perhaps even more confidently than before. We've learned a lot about what we're capable of and have the ambition to go faster and be more impactful. We see several immediate opportunities. Firstly, we're very ambitious for At Home. Historically, this was a U.K. success story, but we've proven we can turn Australia around and now are determined to enter another market this year. Secondly, e-commerce. Our new website lands in the middle of the year. It's a more flexible headless platform and means we can roll out faster and create a much more experiential site than we have today.
Finally, we're encouraged by our start on Tmall Global, which we launched towards the end of last year with the full support of Cruelty Free International. We see this as a great springboard for the China market, and we'll continue to progress that opportunity whilst ensuring that the progress we make there is compatible with our values on animal testing. We're working with other group companies on how to establish a base in the market. To summarize, we made great progress in 2019. Our transformation is on track. We responded well to COVID-19. It sharpened our thinking, and we've learned what we're capable of. Building on all of that, we're looking to the future and are confident of the growth opportunities ahead. Thank you so much for your attention. Now I'd like to hand over to Michael O'Keeffe, who will update you on progress at Aesop. Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Michael O'Keeffe, and I am the CEO of Aesop. Unfortunately, I can't be with you today, but I'm excited to share with you our 2019 highlights. It was another exciting year of growth and development for the brand across the globe. I'll also discuss how we have managed through the coronavirus crisis, and lastly, I'll present our strategic priorities moving forward and the impact these will have on the business. As you can see, we ended 2019 in strong shape with global sales of AUD 459 million and close to 350 stores and counters across 23 countries. This was an excellent result, and in fact, our performance only improved as the year progressed.
Sales grew by a little more than 12% across the year, more than double the wider market's growth. Despite the issues caused by Hong Kong protests and the Chinese crackdown of daigou resellers across many parts of Asia. Although the coronavirus will temporarily affect these growth rates, it also presents us with opportunities to accelerate growth in certain channels and leverage our strengths of meaningful relationships with our customers and communities.
As well as strong so-called business as usual performance, 2019 was a year of innovation and development for Aesop, with the launch of new channel concepts, exciting new products, and many other activities. Some of the highlights included launching our first flagship store, Aesop Sydney, offering private consultation areas and a larger scale of store experience, developing and opening our first travel retail experiences in both Melbourne and Incheon airports, and continued global expansion as we reached new consumers and strengthened our footprint.
The key takeaway here is that we still have so much upside and market white space in which to grow into. Growth will continue to outpace the wider market for a considerable time to come. From a product perspective, we had a strong year with higher than expected sales from new launches. We released 11 new products across five categories, which demonstrates the strong breadth of our offering and brand positioning. Our sustainability journey continues at pace as we launch recycled PET plastic bottles across more than 70% of our range. By the end of 2020, this will be more than 90% of products. We started 2020 with strong momentum and strong Q1 results despite the COVID impact starting to hit Asian markets fairly early on in the calendar year.
We started to feel the impact of the crisis in late February and quickly established a COVID crisis team with four streams of work, all with impressive impact to date. Firstly, we strengthened our bottom line resilience to ensure operational continuity. Our supply chain team pivoted to ramp up the supply of essential products. During the peak of the crisis, we had 70% of the supply chain capacity focused on this. We also reprioritized projects and implemented strong cost control measures to strengthen our cash position.
Secondly, we supported the health, economic position, and safety of our people. In stark contrast to many of our retail peers, to date, we have protected our people with continued payment of full wages to all operating non-executive staff and 100% of top-up of wages for furloughed staff. Third, we captured new top-line opportunities. With more than 91% of our global retail network closed, digital has become a critically important channel for us. Over the period, we experienced year-on-year growth of more than 500%, which went some way to mitigate the retail losses. To enable this, we ramped up digital fulfillment and capacity with eight additional centers opening.
Fourth, compassion for those in need. During the period, we have donated almost $3 million worth of products globally to support both frontline workers and victims of family violence. As mentioned on the previous slide, our own digital channels have become a critical source of sales during the period of the crisis. We realized this early on and have worked hard to move our customers across to the channel, ensure that the resulting experience is as optimal as possible, and that operationally, we have the capacity to serve customers. Traffic and conversion have both grown and exceeded our expectations.
As mentioned, we've been working on quick wins to elevate and evolve our online customer experience. Our conversion rate is now at four times what it was pre-crisis. We also heavily invested into SEM and SEO and created targeted social and email campaigns to drive traffic. As a result, sales growth currently is more than 500% ahead of last year, and every current trading day is larger than our busiest last year. The reality is that this is the tipping point of the iceberg for us, and we have true white space in digital and a strong growth trajectory ahead of us as we build this channel.
As we look forward, we're starting to see glimmers of light as markets reopen and we relaunch our physical stores. Germany, Austria, Norway, and Malaysia have largely reopened with many other markets set to do so in the coming weeks. Our first priority is to ensure that business as usual activities return to normal in as quick time as possible. So far, the indications are positive, with markets trading to expectations. Secondly, we want to get the growth engine of the business firing again. This business has so many opportunities with expansion into new geographies, development of both existing and new channels, deeper engagement and service of our customers, and extension of our existing product lines, and expansion into aligned offerings.
Entering China in a values-oriented way. China is the second largest but fastest growing cosmetics market in the world, and currently we only have a digital cross-border presence into it. There is a huge opportunity for the brand as we know that their people love our products. I'll elaborate more on this opportunity on the next slide. Elevate our digital offering. COVID has accelerated our digital journey, and we need to keep the momentum moving and accelerating where possible. We have a global mobile, digital-savvy customer base, and an enormous opportunity to service them around the world, enhancing our customer connections and creating a truly integrated customer experience.
Linking to our broader digital activities is the opportunity to really understand our customers far better and anticipate and cater for their needs. We have a stronger program of works planned that includes the launch of an upgraded CRM system, the introduction of more tailored digital and content experiences, and expansion of personalized clienteling services. Lastly, evolve and innovate across our product line. We have deliberately kept the Aesop product line exceptionally tight.
As a result, we only offer between 20%- 40% of the products that our major competitors stock. There's a large opportunity to continue to build out both existing and new categories without too much risk of cannibalization or build-up of unnecessary inventory. Lastly, as discussed, the Chinese market is an enormous opportunity for Aesop, and even through the COVID crisis, we haven't taken our eyes off this prize. Some of the work that we're doing here includes continuing the growth of China-facing channels. China is a key area of future growth. We will continue to strengthen our existing channels, for example, Tmall, but at the same time, continue to grow new channels like Little Red Book, Feelunique, and other appropriate digital channels.
We will also be taking more control, strengthening our brand presence, and building out our tone of voice and channels of choice. Lastly, we are currently exploring all available options for a values-aligned physical entry and think that this might now be possible. In preparation and in conjunction with our sister brands, we are opening an Aesop China office and building a local team. We are also developing plans for an experiential House of Aesop concept in Shanghai.
Before I hand back, I'd like to say that last few months have been tough, but our business has been incredibly resilient and has really risen to the challenge. What our teams, in particular digital, have achieved in such a short period of time has been remarkable and bodes exceptionally well for the months and years ahead. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. I'm sure you gathered from the successive presentations that despite the current environment, we have strong momentum across the group. What are the key takeaways from today's Investor Day? First of all, Natura &Co has shown remarkable adaptability and resilience during the COVID-19 crisis and has shown that it's truly a purpose-driven organization. Second, we are going to leverage the momentum that the situation has given us to double down on some very important aspects of our business, like digital. Third, each one of our business has clear growth plans.
For Avon, it is accelerating the Open Up strategy. For Natura &Co LatAm, it's combining the forces of our brands in the region to drive growth. For The Body Shop, it's continue its transformational journey and find the different vectors to accelerate growth. For Aesop, it's continue its relentlessly focus on customer experience now enable even more by digital platforms. Finally, we have greater financial flexibility to implement our plans, thanks to a strengthened balance sheet and enhanced liquidity. In conclusion, let me summarize our investment case, which I believe you have gathered through today's presentation in a compelling way.
First of all, with the integration of Avon, we have four empowered and iconic brands that boast a unique product portfolio across price points, and as you saw today, have clear roadmaps in the post-COVID-19 world. Second, we're a well-balanced, multi-channel group with unparalleled direct-to-consumer reach, accessing more than 200 million consumers around the world. Third, as the past two months have shown, we have a business model with proven resilience. Four, again, as demonstrated in recent weeks, we have robust and fast-growing digital platforms. Fifth, as presented today, there is a strong upside to be captured from synergies resulting from the acquisition of Avon.
Finally, we are purposely driven Avon gives us now a more powerful voice that we know will resonate in the post-COVID-19 world. A world in which cooperation will need to connect with a broad range of stakeholders. Before we open for Q&A with Angela, JP, Michael, David, and Filippo, I would like to call a video that I believe demonstrates in a beautiful way, especially as Mother's Day is coming in two days in most of the countries, the power of the collective, the power of our network, in a beautiful message of Natura to Mother's Day and to all mothers in the world. Let's watch it, and then we'll go to the Q&A.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. If you have a question, please press the star key followed by the one on your touchtone phone now. If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press the pound sign or the hash key. For any questions on the line, that's star, then one on your touchtone phone, and we appreciate your patience, and we're standing by for your questions. Okay. Our first question on the line comes from Thiago Macruz from Itaú BBA. Please go ahead. Your line's open.
Hi, guys. Good afternoon, and thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions. The first question is for JP. It's very clear that there's plenty of opportunities in Avon in Latin America. You've been laying out the plans for synergy generation for the last few months. My question becomes, what's the main source of risk in your view? Do you think that the risk is different technology backgrounds between the two companies, different cultures? When you think about the integration process that you will conduct, what do you think will be the main challenges that you will face, given that it's very clear to us that the opportunities are here? My second question is directed to Roberto.
Roberto, one of the main challenges of being the Executive Chairman and a Global CEO of a group this big is to make sure that whatever learnings you have in specific brands are spread to the group. With that in mind, can you share with us how you think about this matter? What do you intend to do in the upcoming years to make sure that this happens? These are the two questions that I have for you guys. Thank you.
Okay. Thiago, Roberto here. I will start with the latter part, and then I'll ask JP to comment on your first part. Before, I just also want to apologize to all of you for the technical difficulties. We had an issue on the streaming side. Thank you all for hanging in there and staying with us. We'll try at least to take 10-1 5 minutes of Q&A. Appreciate you guys staying for another 10- 15 minutes. About the commercial that you guys didn't see, the people in Brazil, in Latin America saw it. It's a beautiful commercial of Mother's Day that Natura put together that really showed the power of our network and in a very Natura way of showing the power of the collective and honoring all the mothers.
On your second part of the question, I would start saying that what we are trying to do is to continue to use our operating model, that it talks about autonomy with interdependency. We want the business units to be highly- empowered, to drive the business locally, where the group is really providing the support. Again, to your point, Thiago, make sure that we are sharing best practices and connecting in some of the interdependent areas that are so critical. I have to tell you that this crisis provides some silver lining for us.
One of them, for sure, is that we were able to close the transaction of Avon at the beginning of the year. What we've seen is the acceleration of the integration. The teams are working very well together and t he need to actually collaborate becomes even more important now than ever before. For that, we are sharing already some best practices. Natura is working very closely with Angela's team to understand, for example, all the relationship model, the earnings model, how we drive better segmentation.
What you heard about the simplification of the commercial model, the earnings model that Angela is talking about, it's not a coincidence that it's already incorporating some of the learnings from a very successful earnings and commercial model that Natura implemented on the turnaround three years ago, so t hat's already a very clear part of collaboration. The other one is the integration and the synergies that we communicated earlier today, $300 million-$400 million. That's being led by our Chief Transformation Officer, Robert Chatwin, working also very collaboratively between the Latin America part of the business and Avon International.
Last, I also would highlight that we create a role under Silvia Lagnado, a Sustainable Growth Officer, that will continue to drive some of the important pillars that we see that the group can actually add value, like sustainability, digitalization. How we think about innovation, and how we take advantage of our capabilities that we have now across all businesses, so we can create more leverage and do it in a bolder way. We are really applying that in a way that, again, respects the autonomy with interdependency. JP, do you want to take the first part of Thiago's question, please?
Sure. Thiago, let me tell you what is not a risk. That is to do with this strategy, the understanding of the opportunities and the problems, the financial resources, the culture, and the people. As Roberto just pointed out, we had already people dedicated to understanding where the opportunities were, even prior to closing. Right after, we jumped into action and confirming hypothesis and devising new opportunities and detailing the work plans, in all areas. The one thing that this crisis allowed us to do was to accelerate the integration. We found talented people, we found people that were moved by similar causes that n aturally were forced to work together, but that was extremely natural. Now we're talking about the combined business in a very smooth and energetic way already. That's not a source of risk.
Now, as you appreciate, at the same time, we are fixing and building. This is very much what I described to you. There are things to be fixed and many opportunities to be built. The complexity behind this requires a very detailed thinking of all the activities. I think this is the one thing that we are observing as a source of risk. There is so many moving parts that requires a very precise sequencing and thinking. That also includes the IT infrastructure you referred to. Data is critical, and we are transferring, as much as we can, the capabilities which were already installed in Natura to Avon very quickly. You put all those things together, and that is the main source of risk.
That is also the reason why we have a dedicated transformation team, which is at global scale led by Robert Chatwin but w e have people deployed to the region, to the countries, a very well-structured program where we keep pace of every single step to be able to mitigate that. That's what I consider to be perhaps the one most relevant risk. Thank you, Thiago.
Super clear. Thank you, Roberto. Thank you, JP. Thank you all for the presentations.
Thank you. Our next question online comes from Ruben Couto from Santander. Please go ahead. Your line's open.
Good afternoon, everyone. I believe everyone understands the technical difficulties during this time, so thank you for hosting this event even during these trying times. My first question is related to revenue side in LatAm. The first wave JP showed is related to fixed fundamentals at Avon on a standalone basis using Natura capabilities. Should we expect this to happen in every market Avon is operating throughout the world, or only in LatAm? In the second wave, can you share some examples of incentives you can use in overlapping consultants to boost the share of wallet of the two brands combined?
If I may, a second question, on Avon International. Angela mentioned about a new Avon brand campaign. Could you elaborate a little bit on that? Are you going to try to show a new type of brand of value in this sort of campaign? Also talking about the reduction of the portfolio, what this tells us about the future of the fashion and home category? Could you talk a little bit on that as well? Thank you.
Yeah. JP, why don't you start it and then Angela can comment a little bit on what we are planning, and again, without unveiling the new campaign, which is pretty exciting. I think Angela can talk a little bit about the thinking behind. JP, go ahead, and then I think I'll ask Angela to chime in
Sure. Well, you will hear directly from Angela, our teams are working together to understand how and what to do with the fundamentals of the channel management and with the portfolio. Our teams already met many times, from the beginning of the year to fix these things. You should see the same sort of movement on a global scale.
Of course, each country and operation are starting from a different point, so it has to be adjusted in speed and in depth of those changes. You asked me about incentives that will be used. I wouldn't like to tell you much about that, I can already tell you, say, even before the incentive, there are barriers, like credit. There might be consultants, which are being blocked in one brand and enabled in another brand, and just by looking at their transactional combined profile, we can unlock credit
Similarly, logistics. There are delivery frequencies that can be incremented as we combine both brands, in which case it shortens the cycle with which the consultant, the representative, and finally the end consumer is served. Without disclosing much, if you think about the complementarity of our portfolios and categories, and this is something that we have already defined a plan where we define very precisely where each brand is going to play. If you think about that complementarity and against our competitors, that will be the sort of origin of the incentive that we're going to put in place so that we can encourage Avon representatives or Natura consultants to embrace the complementary part of the portfolio with the other brand against our main competitors. Angela, would you like to jump in?
Yes. Thank you, JP. Good afternoon. As you are all aware, we do have, in this moment, 98% of brand awareness in most of our countries, and we are still enjoying positioning top three brands in color, skincare, and fragrance. However, we see a major opportunity to reignite consideration and promote Avon and refresh its position as a brand that is relevant cross-generations, and create this more relevant and a really bolder position that will reconnect, not our current customers, but the lapsed customers and create an opportunity to have the acquisition of new customers. We are very excited by it. As Roberto has just said, we are not going to reveal more today, we are aiming to relaunch the brand in the second half of this year.
JP has already called out the work we do together to reprioritize our core brands, understand their role as traffic builders, increasing the basket. We're looking at all the tiers from value to premium and create a portfolio that really taps into this new trend that we see right now, plus everything we've learned so far, and create that emotional connection with our consumers. With this portfolio restructured for all price points, we are equally looking to cut the tail and create a much clearer, neater portfolio choice for each and every of these tiers that will give us an opportunity to streamline it by 30% and even more so, in fashion and home, where we are looking to cut by 40%. Is this answering your question?
Yeah. Just on the fashion and home category, what should we think about it going forward? That's perfect. Thank you.
On this one, just briefly, Ruben, again, we see that it still is an important strategic category. As Angela said, we are potentially taking advantage of this crisis to do a reset, and there is an opportunity in parts of the world to potentially reduce significantly the tail, which we know had a lot of inefficiency in the system with a very low margin.
At the same time, there is also possibility to focus on a more strategic part of the business on the wellbeing side, on fashion and home and beauty side of fashion home. It is important in Latin America, and JP is also looking into that. I think the short answer is, it will continue to be a strategic part of the portfolio, but there is a big opportunity now, and we are taking advantage and being very bold as we speak, to reset that, to simplify, to streamline, and to actually work on more strategic elements of fashion and home.
Very clear. Thank you, guys.
Thank you. Our next question online comes from Joseph Giordano from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question again today. I'd like to understand a little bit how you guys are seeing structural changes towards the future, right? It seems that the COVID outbreak kind of fast-forwarded five years, the digitalization of many of your customers, right? Also probably changing the consumption profile and also the consumption behavior.
At this point, again, I know maybe it's too early to gauge potential structural changes. How are you guys seeing the consumers post-COVID, right? Within COVID, I think it's a little bit easier, but post-COVID, how do you see the world change, and how can that affect the investment plan of Natura &Co, particularly on the bricks-and-mortar world in here, includes The Body Shop, Aesop, and the rollout of the Natura store? Thank you.
All right. Hey, Joseph. I'll start here. Then I'm going to invite David and Michael to comment as well, more on the global side and especially on the retail. I think you already started articulating kind of very much the way we see it. One, we are calling this new normal. We don't think that the world is going to go back to the way it was before this pandemic. There are important lessons and t here are things that we want to build and continue to potentially even double down. One of them for sure is the digitalization in e-commerce. You heard from the business how nimble, how agile the business has responded.
I think both in terms of our relationship selling, but also our omni-channel with The Body Shop and Aesop, I think we can continue to invest behind that and continue to drive a lot of the opportunities coming from e-commerce. You heard also from David the opportunity for us on the at home. Body Shop At Home, the direct selling part, we are seeing tremendous performance both in the U.K. and Australia, and we think that there is an opportunity to expand in other geographies. I also think that the consumer behaviors and preferences are going to change. We all discuss and agree that there's going to be different habits of consumers.
I think categories related more to protection, hygiene, are categories that are going to continue to be in high demand, and the teams are already working in innovation aspects that can better meet the demands of the consumers, even post-crisis. There's a lot of things that we are already seeing, and we are doubling down to make sure that we can come out of that even in a stronger way. Let me invite David and Michael to comment a little bit about from a retail perspective.
Thanks, Roberto. Forgive me, Michael, if I just jump in quickly. I think you summed up the situation pretty well. Joseph, I'd refer you to my earlier presentation, the example that I gave around the U.K. and the omni-channel approach that we're taking in that market. We continue to see stores as being important. It's the ultimate and most experiential place where we sell our product. We see stores having a role going forward. As we see the stores reopening in markets, the picture is pretty much as you'd expect. Traffic is not what it was pre-crisis. That makes us reflect on economics. How many stores should we have?
In that context, as you suggested in your question, it's probably a little early to say too much on that. As you know from the progress that we've made in managing our store portfolio over the last couple of years, where there's opportunities to cut back on numbers of marginal and loss-making stores, we don't hesitate to do that. A bit early in terms of really understanding what the retail landscape will look like. As Roberto said, we get the picture very well in terms of some of the forces that are driving things, our focus will be omni-channel. We think our digital channel and at home is going to be increasingly important.
Yeah, maybe just building on what David just said, what I'd say is I concur from a channel perspective. I think coming out of this, I'm even a bigger believer in direct-to-consumer channels. I think we're finding, and you're seeing in the U.S. with department stores recently, some department stores like Neiman Marcus are having problems. I think if you're just a wholesaler in this market going forward, then you're going to have some issues. The fact that all of our brands have such a large D2C component from a channel perspective, I think is really powerful and really important going forward. I just think generally, the customer journeys that we're seeing and in markets we're reopening in Asia, it's no longer just either digital or retail. It's click and collect, it's click and curbside. It's all different varieties and so y ou also have to have the tech to back that.
What I'd also say is, Roberto is right. The protect category is very strong. We're finding in markets like Korea and Taiwan, Malaysia that's just reopened, customers are certainly interested in that. For us, they're interested in trading up to a more premium product on that. Having said that, though, the core skincare lines for us and haircare are also trading quite well. I don't think it's the same sort of consumer pattern post the global financial crisis this time. Thanks for that.
Thank you. Our next question on the line comes from Bob Ford from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and thanks for the presentations. We're all doing these virtual forums for the first time, so it's very understandable to have a little bit of difficulty. Angela, I had a question with respect to consultant turnover. It's historically been very high at Avon in comparison to Natura, and I was wondering how you can reduce that and how you can create a more compelling business opportunity for consultants. You also mentioned some green shoots, and I was hoping you could share some examples of those.
Then David, Michael mentions a 4x increase in store conversion rates, and I know Aesop tends to be a little more curated, a little more one-on-one, but I was wondering if there's similar opportunities for you at The Body Shop. You also mentioned expanding in direct sales into new markets, and I was wondering where you see the most compelling white space for that. I also wanted to ask you when you anticipate putting some technology into that at home business, because my understanding is it's still relatively low tech.
Thank you, Bob. Angela, go ahead, and then I think, David, you can answer. Just on the two markets, Bob, in terms of at home. Again, without getting into much details at this point. As you even highlighted many times, and you heard through the presentations, the two biggest markets in the world in beauty, we are extremely underdeveloped. China and the U.S. I think it's not a coincidence that we are putting more effort in China, as you heard, both from David and Michael, and it is one area that we are looking from an at-home perspective at The Body Shop. At this point, we haven't committed anything. We are still in evaluation mode. Angela, go ahead, and then, David, you can please chime in as well.
Sure. In many of our markets, we have been focused on short-term transactions, and this had an impact on the churn of our representatives, especially the new ones. We have had significant service issues. Very difficult to retain representatives when they come in, and they realize that there is a high effort for them to earn the money that they anticipated when they joined. We are looking right now to improve their experience at all touch points, their service, but equally, their earning model gets to be much more long-term focused in creating a value proposition for different representative segments.
Creating that opportunity to bring a lifetime value based on the learnings we have, both from our previous experiences and experiments, and as well, the rich experience and the rich learning we are getting from Natura and turnaround from three years ago. All of this we wrap with a simplified field management process that will give us this one-to-one peer support and attention to representative engagement, training, and loyalty. Then it's about the value of the brand. When we create a brand that really creates the demand, representatives are finding much more easier to stay connected to their customers and have the right frequency of purchase and the right size of basket, therefore, meaningful opportunity for them to stay with us longer term.
In terms of green shoots, just some examples?
The green shoots we've seen as in digital. Digital is key to the long-term retention of the representatives. We've seen a stabilizing already the representative decline, ending the quarter with a better ending rep count than we have been in the first quarter. Seeing the adoption of the digital channel right now, already 4 times more than the one we started with. This is the highest speed of the acceleration we've seen with people adopting our digital tools. We have 37% of our representatives right now adopting the e-suite of digital apps. We do see a high representative engagement. Now during coronavirus, it has been overwhelming, truly humbling to see how the Avon community has raised to the challenge, and they stayed united, kept united.
David, do you want to chime in-
Yeah. I'll just jump in there.
...on The Body Shop piece?
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Very happy to. I think Roberto's really answered the question on evaluation of markets. There's been a ton of stuff, as you can imagine, Bob, over the last few months. We're pretty clear about what the landscape might look like in terms of the next three years or so. We just need to get clear on where the next market's going to be. We're getting fairly close to that decision right now. In terms of technology, so I'm kind of answering the second part of your question first.
In terms of the technology, actually, we had a platform that really did the job in the U.K. You'll be familiar with the fact that we've made a lot of progress in At Home in the U.K. over the last three years or so, and we continue to be excited. Just as a headline, consultant numbers are currently at double what they were a year ago. We feel good about the progress that we're making there. The challenge that we had from a tech point of view was Australia was lagging. Last year, we made the investment to put the U.K. platform into the Australia business, and provide some new tools for our leaders down there.
As a consequence, we've been absolutely delighted with the progress. We feel from the capacity of being able to do what we need to do with that channel right now, we have a tech platform that does the job. Just going back to the first part of your question, talking a little bit about conversion. The reality is at the moment that when people are shopping, visiting sites, visiting stores, there's a high intention to buy.
We're seeing similar levels of improvement in conversion rates on our sites around the world, as described by Michael. Interestingly, as we're starting to reopen stores, and you won't necessarily be completely surprised by this, but we're seeing in the region of about a 10-point improvement in conversion rates in stores. Because if you're going to go shopping at a time like this, chances are you're really going to buy something. Conversion's encouraging. ATV's encouraging. You've seen the headlines about what's been going with e-commerce. We've tripled our business. We think there's the opportunity to maybe able to do a bit more than that once our new warehouse is fully up to speed. Hopefully, that answers it, Bob.
Thank you. Our final question comes from Gustavo from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for taking my question, and thank you for continuing with this event despite the technical problems. I think it's been very helpful to understand what's going on with the company. Thank you. I have a question that I wanted to tie a little bit what JP mentioned in his speech, although I couldn't hear that part, so maybe it's a little bit of a follow-up because of the technical issues. I want to just understand what happened in the first quarter first. When I look at Natura brand in Brazil and Avon brand in Brazil, the similar thing happened in the Hispanic LatAm, but the price mix growth was up 9.7% in Natura brand in Brazil, 9.8% in Avon brand in Brazil y et the results were very different, right?
Natura brand grew almost 10%, and Avon brand declined substantially. Tying that to Wave 1, where you said that you want to, in the very short term, fix the operation in Brazil, and a few of the things you want to do is getting the pricing right, eliminate commercial bad practice, etc . How that differs from what you're doing already with Natura brand in Brazil, and actually perhaps understanding whether Wave 1, 2, and 3 are sequential waves or actually everything is going to happen in parallel because i t seems that a lot of the capability that Natura has today, that Avon doesn't have in Brazil, are in channel and not necessarily in category or pricing position, etc .
The last question also to understand what could happen with the turnaround in Avon Brazil is to pick up one sentence that Angela mentioned, which is the repositioning of Avon in Europe, when Angela said that you want to focus more on a premium proposition rather than a value proposition. Whether this is part of the Avon turnaround in Brazil and Latin America as well. If that is part of the strategy, should we continue to see a decline in Avon's revenue for both in Brazil and Latin America, but also internationally as you are repositioning from mass to premium? Those are the questions. Thank you.
Gustavo, I'm going to start just to clarify a few things, and then I'll ask JP. One is, let's not forget that we acquire Avon and the levels of decline of Avon was around 10%, right, overall. It is a turnaround story, and that's not going to happen in a quarter or two quarters or even in a year, right? Just to be setting the expectation. This is a process, the synergies that we present today in revenue, it's a four-year plan that we actually put it on the presentation, how we are planning to capture those. It is a turnaround story. Again, I don't think by magic, you're going to see from one month to another, a performance of Avon, similar to what we're seeing with Natura.
We want to get there, I have all the confidence, all the plans that we are doing that we're going to get there, it's going to take a while, right? Even Brazil, just as a reference, right? Fourth quarter 2019, the drop in Avon Brazil was - 8%, first quarter was -4% . It is a sequential improvement, that's going to be the case. The other thing to clarify, I don't think we are saying, maybe there was a misunderstanding, that Avon is going to be a premium brand. Avon is always going to be a very democratic brand. It has a very important part of the portfolio.
Having said that, there are categories, especially in Latin America, like perfume, that is very important, is a weak part of the portfolio of Avon. Taking all the learnings, all the expertise of Natura, there is an objective or a goal to potentially improve that part and create a little more revenue opportunity for the representative. Having said that, it's not that Avon is going to become a premium brand. With that, let me invite JP to comment in more details about the wave that we put together. JP, please.
Yeah, Gustavo, you made so many questions. I thought I would have to disclose all my strategic plan right now to you. Let's try my best here. First of all, as regards Q1 results, Roberto already pointed out. It's very loaded with the inertia of the business prior to closing, right? We are not yet following the same recipe or anything like that. I mean, we are working very close to put together a common plan, that's not the case. When you look at one particular metric, which was the price mix numbers. You can already imagine that compared the two brands, the price mix effect is not being driven by the same drivers in both brands.
Natura was more mix, Avon was more price. You cannot just increase prices and expect that the whole equation will balance out if you're not playing with the overall perception of the brands and the different tiers in the portfolio. That has to do with what Angela actually said, and which Roberto pointed out. Avon is not going to become a premium brand. It's only that it plays in different price tiers, and we have to be sharper on each of those price tiers, and that gives us opportunities of playing the portfolio better, and that's one of the things we're going to do going forward because, perhaps we have been using, at least in Latin America, the lower end of that portfolio too much, and there's no need for that. There are opportunities for using some more valuable parts of that portfolio, right?
As regards all the waves, they do overlap to a certain extent, but there is a sequence. Wave 1 has to be well on its way for Wave 2 to pick up. Both have to be relatively well- established for us to push for Wave 3. That is the sequence that creates more value and reduce risks to a question that was raised before. Even now, there are tests going on which are relevant for Wave 3 but t he majority of our effort is focused on Wave 1, okay? Roberto, I think I finished here.
Guys, I want to, again, thank you all for joining us. Apologies again for the technical difficulties. Again, the whole thing was really in the spirit of you guys being informed about a lot of moving parts, but at the same time about the excitement on behalf of the whole management team in terms of how the business is managing through the crisis on a very agile, resilient way. I believe posting outstanding results in a very challenging and unprecedented crisis. We certainly hope that the next meeting hopefully will be smoother or at least in a physical and a remote way. Again, we just hope that this enabled us to be more informed about everything that's going on with Natura &Co.
I also want to say that the presentation is going to be available at our investor relations site and the audio as well. You can always refer to that. Our IR team is always available for any further follow-up. We look forward to future exchanges. In the meantime, please stay safe and be well. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend. For the countries with Mother's Day, happy Mother's Day this Sunday. Thank you very much.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That concludes the Natura audio conference today. Thank you very much for your participation. Have a good day.