We're gonna kick things off without any further ado. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming along. It's a busy room, but there are a couple of seats, I think, scattered around, especially at the front, so please feel free to take one. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Callum Elliott. I am Bernstein's US HPC and Beverages analyst, and I'm delighted to welcome Fabrizio Freda, who needs not much introduction as the CEO of Estée Lauder Companies. Alongside Fabrizio is Guillaume Jesel, who is the president and CEO for Tom Ford and head of Luxury Business Development. I feel like I might have massacred the pronunciation of your surname there, Guillaume.
Just a quick housekeeping item, on this, the screen behind me, we should have a safe harbor statement for the Estée Lauder Companies regarding forward-looking information and non-GAAP disclosures, of which you should all be aware. With that out the way, Fabrizio, Guillaume, thank you for joining us.
Thanks.
Pleasure. Good morning.
Good morning. So, Fabrizio, I think we need to start with growth. Two years ago, when you were here with Peter Jueptner—
Yeah
head of your international business, we talked a lot about your Compass, your sort of long-term strategic roadmap. But the past couple of years has clearly seen a lot of volatility. So as you strategize today, on beauty industry growth for the next several years, what do you think will be the primary drivers of growth for the beauty industry and, and prestige in particular for your business? And, and how has that changed over the past few years since we had that conversation with Peter?
Yeah. First of all, the key concept is there is still a lot of growth in front of us in the industry. This is a high-growth industry. The prestige beauty part is really a high-growth industry. There are so many long-term secular activities and changes which are happening that will, in my opinion, confirm this for the next 10 years. It's not only a short-term thing. So let's start from, first of all, the markets. We see 3 blocks. First of all, emerging markets other than China. This group of markets, we look at them all together, and altogether, they are a very big source of growth for the future, even currently, but also projecting it to the future in the Compass sense. These emerging markets are growing for several reasons.
They are at different stage of their development, and I will make you example, but they are all growing because the middle class is growing, because the per capita consumption of prestige beauty is growing, because the categories are growing in different ways. For example, some cases there is low penetration of skincare. This is increasing or lower penetration in makeup or in fragrance. This is increasing. So there are different category development stages, and they all are growing because of the overall growth of prestige versus mass. So, for example, take India as an example. India has about, today, 10% of the total industry is prestige luxury, but this part of the industry is growing double than the total industry. So you can easily see how over time, this become 20%, 30%, 40%.
The same phenomenon happened in China, where in 2017 to today, the penetration of this has more than doubled in term of the luxury versus total industry. There are many example of that. So, examples for us, our emerging markets is places like India, where we have very high market share, where the growth is very strong, where we are penetrating the market in term of distribution. There are still a lot of opportunity. There is infrastructure being built. There is a lot of growth also in the middle class. But the key idea is that the online is playing the role. Online commerce is playing the role to make the acceleration of this emerging market much faster.
The reason for that is that historically, emerging market, we are growing, at least in luxury, at the pace of infrastructure, because the infrastructure of luxury had to grow ahead of the market. Now, with the online, the ability to reach the consumers which are ready to buy is immediate. And take India as an example, the arrival of one of our partners, which is Nykaa online business, has changed completely our ability to penetrate. And so our market share now is in the 40 plus, 40% plus of the prestige, so very strong position to grow. So emerging markets will continue to grow. We have a team that work on them. It's very, very strong team. They look to connect them among. The second is developed market. Developed market are growing very fast. Frankly, one of the consumer industry which is growing the fastest.
The driver of developed markets growth is, for example, in skincare, is regimens. People are using more regimens, so multiple products, or the age of usage of skincare is getting younger. Fragrances. Fragrances have developed, in developed market, has gone from 2-3 fragrances in a home to 6-7. So the amount of fragrances in home is increased, and because of these brands that offer collections, a much better ability to penetrate the market than the single, brands, etcetera. And, and then importantly, the, the interest, again, the interest in, in high-quality, prestige, luxury beauty products has increased. So again, also in developed market, the percentage of growth of prestige is faster than mass. And so the, the development of the prestige market, the percentage of the total, keep increasing in the correct, in the correct way. So this from a geographical standpoint.
The Compass from category standpoint, we still believe skincare, as two years ago, is going to be the fastest growing category. Now, this is a positive, because skincare is also the one with the best P&L structure, particularly with the best gross margin in the overall. And so the fact that skincare will continue to grow ahead of the average is actually good for profitability in the entire industry. The skincare is also growing, as I said before, because of regimen usage, but it also growing because consumers are really seeing the reason for using skincare in different area. There is anti-aging, that probably if you follow our innovation program, anti-aging is turning into age reversal, and technology is going from anti-aging to age reversal.
Then there is the instant benefit growth, which is for young consumers that prefer, for example, benefits like luminosity, glow, benefits which are immediate, which are happening now, and that's one other aspect. And then finally, the growth of skincare in terms of the expertise of consumer is changing. The amount of knowledge about ingredients. And all these expertise in making consumer much more capable of driving regimens. Instead of using one product, using three products for night, three products for day. And then what is increasing overall in the market is the consumption of night products and the use of product during the night cycles. So this is driving skincare. What is driving makeup is many aspects, obviously many markets, but the couture makeup, for example, is winning in Asia.
Makeup artist makeup is doing very well in the West. So different markets drive different parts, but makeup is becoming particularly thanks to looks, and the different looks by different location is growing exponentially. And finally, fragrances, I comment on this, is probably one of the fastest growing categories because of the amount of product in every home. Consumers are using fragrances for different occasions, for different moment. I still remember, my father had used one fragrance all his life, like probably your fathers or mothers as well. But I already was a revolutionary, I used two. But now, my children use seven, eight, one for every kind of occasion, for every moment, et cetera. That is a big change of the category, as you can imagine, and this is dramatically increasing the overall consumption.
This is the category which is the biggest percentage of business in prestige, luxury versus the total. So it's driving also. The growth of this category is also driving the mix between prestige and mass in a very positive way for, for prestige. So those are the, the big changes. The last maybe I want to mention is channels. Channels continue... The mix of channel continue to grow. Obviously, online continues to accelerate, to increase the percentage of the total. Now, on average, online is more profitable than brick-and-mortar, at least in this industry, so this is a positive growth. Travel Retail continue. We will go back to growth, obviously, in the post-COVID environment. It will remain a key channel for discovering, for trial of products, particularly for emerging markets and for emerging consumers.
The growth of Travel Retail in these days, for example, when travel is happening again around the world, is increasing, and not only in Asia, but particularly actually around the world, and this will continue. There is a very interesting channel, which is explosive in the East and just starting in the West, which we consider a great opportunity for the future, which is the social selling. And the social selling, which means the interaction between the social media activation and the selling. So you can go from Instagram to buy. You can go from TikTok Shop to TikTok social, or vice versa. So this interaction between the social moment and the commerce moment, which is, by the way, on the way in China, explosive growth, is starting also in the East, in the West.
And so you will see more of this driving the consumption, because the immediacy from media moment and buying moment is obviously a big booster of buy. So that's why I hope I gave you an overview, by category, by channel, by geography. There are many, many reasons why this industry is expected to be a high growth industry also for the next 10 years.
Incredibly detailed answer. There's one thing, sort of elephant in the room, that you didn't talk about, which was China. So we spoke about the emerging markets-
Yeah.
and developed markets. Maybe we can turn to your business in China, specifically. And I guess my question is, between Travel Retail in China and the domestic Chinese market, Chinese consumers in totality have been a pretty integral part of the growth of your business over the past decade. Where are we today for this Chinese opportunity? And, you know, how is that intersection of Travel Retail for Chinese consumers versus the Mainland Chinese market, you know, how is that channel interaction playing out today? And how is that interaction different maybe to what it looked like before the pandemic?
Yeah, that's also a very specific question. And yes, let's start from the last part of the question. What was before the pandemic? Before the pandemic, I'm sure you know, in our industry, so in beauty, in luxury beauty. There was 40% or 50%, it is estimated, of the consumption of the purchasing act of Chinese consumer was happening outside of China during their travel. So, this 40%, maybe 50%, of consumption and purchasing that was happening outside of China during COVID, obviously came back into China, and came back into Mainland business, and came back into Hainan business. So both in the traveling Hainan situation and in Mainland situation. So, it was a repatriation of a lot of consumption that was happening outside for our industry.
That's obviously built the internal industry. Now, we since the beginning of the story, we really follow Chinese consumers buying a Chinese consumer consumption, rather than one where they buy, how they buy, has been changing in the last 10 years, many times been evolving, and by the way, is very volatile also because the, the Chinese consumer is, they, you know, change direction of where to buy easily, depending on pricing, depending on interest, if the services they get provided, depending on the situation, because buying is also a form of entertainment. And so traveling, for example, is buying during travel is very, very important for Chinese consumers, for Chinese travelers. It's part of the joy of traveling, the joy of discovery. So in that sense, today, this is changing again. And we, we see in this moment, the traveling consumers around the world increasing.
This is obviously the people that travel, that go, this more the Chinese consumer, which are traveling back to visit Paris or Tokyo, tend to be the high class, the high middle class, the high side of the middle class. They, they are, in this moment, less subject to the pressure in economy or the consumer sentiment issues that we see in Mainland China. So this consumer are buying. This part, business is growing. And when they travel, they buy sometimes in the Paris airport, or in the London airport, or they buy downtown in London, at Harrods, at Selfridges, or they buy in Tokyo. Actually, Tokyo in this moment is really booming in the sense.
They buy in Tokyo, mainly in the Tokyo department stores, for example, and they buy products which are interesting to them, and maybe they look for novelty, they look sometimes for what they can buy a lower price. As you know, the yen is low in this moment, so it's actually good moment to buy in Japan, so they buy a lot in a sense, or they buy to discover new things that maybe are not available in their city or in their parts. A lot of these travelers may come from tier four, tier five cities, so they may not have stores, for example, of luxury in their city. They may have the access online, but not the access in brick-and-mortar. So, just making the example of Japan, because give you the tangible example of what really happened.
Department stores in Japan are super high service department stores, so the pleasure of somebody living in a tier four city where there is no brick-and-mortar experience, can only buy online, being in a Japanese department store to discover this brand in detail, is a beautiful, pleasant experience, so they, they go for it. So, that's why you see now a big growth of Chinese consumption in the various airports of the touristic destination, a big growth in the downtown of the touristic destination. Then, you look at the Hainan, that continue to be, in our opinion, will continue to be an amazing center of consumption, because there will be a lot of people continue to travel there. And this, over time, in the long term, will continue to grow and to continue to offer opportunity.
In the last quarter, as we discussed during the last quarter, we saw growth in the retail in this area, that is back. There's a lot of traffic increase at that time, although those are volatile. Volatile time also in the traveling consumers within China, but there's been growth. Then in Mainland, you have a phenomenal way. In this moment, as you know, we have discussed in the last quarter as well, we see consumer sentiment being still soft. The market was declining overall, internally, and so there is a soft market. We believe it's temporary, however, this is in this moment, the reality, and this is linked to consumer sentiment.
Now, it's true that the traveling consumers, which are growing clearly in all senses, as I explained, they tend to be high-end middle class, while the Mainland consumers, they may be by the new middle class. They buy one time, they try to buy at the best possible price. That's probably the people which are, in this moment, more touched by the low consumer sentiment, by the soft. So there is a difference between middle class levels, in which one is impacted more by the current situation, which again, we believe this is going to evolve. But as we said in the last quarter discussion, when we look at the total, and those are estimates, because we are not direct to consumer everywhere in the world, so we need to estimate wholesalers things.
But in this estimate, even in this soft moment of the whole, in Mainland China, the total Chinese consumption is actually on a growing trend, when you capture all of it around the world. So Chinese consumer remains a fundamental engines of growth for the long term. We are very well positioned in this Chinese consumer area. We have strong market shares. We have, when we look at the market share, now by quarter, last quarter was a soft quarter. But when we look, for example, on the total calendar year, 2023, we've been growing market shares in care, we've been growing market share in makeup.
... we've been, sorry, in fragrances, we are losing some markets there in makeup, and it is because we have not been playing yet aggressively enough in what is called the pure makeup, which is a big opportunity, which by the way, Guillaume will comment in a second on, which is mainly a Tom Ford opportunity for us. For the future, it will be a great opportunity for the long term. So, net, China is here to stay as a big engines of growth, together with the emerging markets, together with the developed markets. And the moment the softness, the current softness linked to consumer sentiments will improve, I think we are super well positioned to enjoy it also in Mainland China, but definitely we are already enjoying it in the comeback of travel of the Chinese consumers, which is very exciting.
Thank you. Maybe you want to add?
Listen, I'll echo some of what you said. I think it's even more relevant for the luxury segment in China for Tom Ford. So Tom Ford anchors the upper end of luxury in the portfolio of the Estée Lauder Company. So calendar 2023 was a standout year for us last year for the market. Actually, the market grew double digits both in fragrance and makeup. Tom Ford also grew double digits in both, and we outpaced the market both in fragrance and makeup. Actually, in makeup, we grew at twice the rate of the market in calendar 2023 in the prestige market year. So in makeup, we see badge value remains important, particularly for items that are used in public.
In fragrance, we see the collection effect that Fabrizio mentioned, where actually consumers are buying more than one fragrance and collecting. So we're seeing repurchase. That's important because this is a nascent category in China. There was not a lot of consumption of fragrance before. It was bought more to put on the vanity. Now it's purchased for use. And the actual customer lifetime value of fragrance is the highest. And so that's very important because we think that there is sustainability there. So we gain share in both of those categories, and we contributed in fragrance to the creation of the luxury end of the market in China, and that's what we refer, Fabrizio, often as the pyramid inverting.
The pyramid being the upper end of fragrances, the luxury end of fragrances, is becoming larger, and we're seeing that happening also in China. So this phenomenon, which occurred during the pandemic, is sustainable. If you compare actually, post-pandemic, the situation is that Tom Ford actually tripled the business in domestic China. So that's quite impressive. You also mentioned the other emerging markets. In the other emerging markets, excluding China, Tom Ford doubled compared to pre-pandemic. So this is comparing to fiscal 2019. That's the reference there that we kept. If you look at the categories compared to pre-pandemic, makeup doubled and fragrance quintupled during that period of time for Tom Ford in China. I think the brand is highly desirable also in China.
That's really important. The Media Impact Value of the brand in China is ranked number 7 by Launchm etrics, and we're seeing a lot of loyalty with our consumers. When you look at channels, I think that both online and our own retail stores, along with, of course, the luxury department stores, are very important. Online is more for recruitment, and it's very important in second and third, fourth tier cities, where we're seeing consumption of fragrance of the recruitment sizes, the smaller sizes, because there used to be a barrier to entry in fragrance, and now people are starting to consume with the smaller sizes. Makeup is the same as recruitment formats online.
Whereas at the other end of the spectrum in our retail stores, which is where you see the brand equity at its full, in its full glory, we're seeing much higher penetration of high-net-worth consumers, as well as men, which are actually also present in the online channel, for fragrance, 40% of our customer base. We're seeing a very high average natural, average purchase in those freestanding stores. That is more than double what we see online, so that really reflects sort of what's happening with luxury in China overall.
We do see, as the Chinese resume travel, we're seeing the same phenomenon, that they are also we are gaining share in Greater China overall, including Travel Retail , and the other neighboring countries during that same period time.
Guillaume, maybe we can stick with you because it's a serendipitous time to have you here. You've spoken a lot there about Tom Ford, but as everyone in the room can see on the stage behind you, the rest of your title is Luxury Business Development. Estée Lauder Companies is in the process of trying to recreate what you've done with Tom Ford now with the Balmain brand going forward. So, I guess maybe my question is, what are the learnings that you think you can take from the success you've had with Tom Ford to the Balmain brand?
You know, how do you balance the benefits of building these luxury brands from scratch, within the beauty industry versus the drawbacks, trade-offs in terms of the time it takes to build from scratch?
Listen, I think that, yeah, we will be launching Balmain in September 2024. We signed the partnership with Balmain in about two years ago, so we're on track to launch in time in September with the fragrance in the beginning. I think that we are taking a lot of the learnings from Tom Ford for this development, and I think it starts with the incredible equity of the brand or the founder. So in the case of Balmain, it's a fashion house that's been around since 1945. They have very strong codes. They have also, which was the same for Tom Ford, even though in the case of Balmain, it's already a fully developed one.
Very strong vision from the creative director, which we work very closely with, and so influences the creativity. Of course, we uphold the highest levels of quality, as well, in the product that we developed. We create innovation that is unparalleled in terms of the uniqueness of the conceptual innovation that we create, that has to deliver more than on tangible attributes, also on creating concepts that that don't exist yet in the market. And so I think if you, if you look at some of the Tom Ford really has been a phenomenon for us in terms of delivering sustainable growth. And so you ask, you know, what, what are the drawbacks of in terms of speed? I think that you know, Tom Ford is a top 20 brand overall.
In the past under 10 years, it's been 30 ranks. It was 15, now 30. You look at fragrance, it's a top 10 brand in fragrance, under 10 years in 18 ranks. Makeup is also top 20, in 20 ranks, in makeup in under 10 years. Fragrance business accounts for double since pre-pandemic. So I think there's a number of elements here in the growth and the ranking progression of the brand that shows that luxury has staying power, and that it has steadily delivered ranking progression and growth that is sustainable and profitable. So that is the reason why. Those are some of the elements that are replicable from what we've done, both equity-wise as well as financially and commercially, from Tom Ford , that are replicable to Balmain.
That is unique in the way of working at the Estée Lauder Companies, which Fabrizio often comments on, connecting creativity and analytics. This is the best example of that. It's like it leverages both the strategic way of managing brands of the Estée Lauder Companies with the equities of another party that brings that creativity together. And I think the connection between the two is where the genius of the company.
Okay, I like that. Let's go back to Fabrizio. So, my first question, you started-
By the way, he's being humble, but the Balmain is really beautiful. The execution they're making with the support, the Balmain team and the creative director is outstanding. So I'm sure in September you will have a very-
Very important reaction to what you will see, what kind of luxury brand will be created.
I agree. I think brand creation, and thank you for that opportunity, is a rare occasion. I think to do so with Olivier Rousteing, who's the designer of Balmain, is both the youngest and the most tenured of any designer in a Parisian fashion house. It's extremely inspiring to work with him. I think that the mandate was to create something that was unique and breathtaking, and I think we'll hopefully fulfill that dream when we reveal the brand in the fall.
I clearly believe so.
Thank you.
So Fabrizio, where we started the conversation and where you started your answer to my first question, was emerging markets outside of China, and the strong opportunity that those present, you touched a little bit upon India. Maybe you could look past India, and where outside of India do you think some of the other greatest opportunities lie? And maybe you can also talk about the strategies you're deploying in some of those markets, where, as you say, the runway for distribution growth is still incredibly long. And also, which brands you choose to play with in those markets, you know, as pertains to the affordability and price tiers.
So every market is different, a different stage of development. What they have in common is that all the markets have, as I said, middle class development. Then all the markets have a higher penetration of beauty in terms of consumption. As I said, China double or more than double in the last 5 years, and the same is happening in every one of the market, different stages of the development. The third is the penetration of luxury prestige as percentage of the total market. So markets that were, China was less than 10% just a few years ago, now is in the 40. So Korea, 60% of the market is luxury versus mass. So all these markets start from mass being the market and luxury being 5, 10%, and then luxury over time become up to whatever.
North America is almost 50/50, et cetera. Becomes into, let's say, the 50/50 zone. Okay, so when you span, the growth comes from middle class growth, plus increased consumption per individual, plus increased penetration of luxury versus total. You see that in all these emerging markets, there are extraordinary potential of total prestige market growth. Now, what we have done strategically is in the last 10 years, we aimed at becoming the number one, number two company in each one of this market, where we are today. So we have among the biggest market share, if not the number one, is always at least the number two, but in most of the cases, the number one. So we have leadership market shares in well-positioned, in fast-growing markets.
That's why what we have done in the last 10 years to prepare this moment has been very, very important. Second, what is the acceleration strategy? Common to all, I said before, the online penetration is dramatically increased. The moment when we started in China, just to speak to the China playbook as an example, we started in Beijing and Shanghai. Only with the arrival of Tmall the acceleration of the China market to tier three, tier four, tier five cities went faster, much faster than the brick-and-mortar distribution problems. Till today, in China, we are with the most distributed brand in 140 cities, and we serve more than 600 stores. Now, the same phenomenon is happening in India, in Mexico, Italy, everywhere.
So the physical distribution is now more focused in these emerging markets, in big cities where the productivity per door is efficient. And because of this, it's profitable, while the other part of consumption is served by online, thanks to technology, now brings also the services typical of luxury with them. That combination is a winning combination for all of these emerging markets, because it allow the emerging market development in an efficient way. We are profitable. We are sometimes more profitable in these emerging markets than in some of the developed markets, because the model is well-managed profitable, because it's a high productivity per door model. As you know, for luxury, the high productivity per door model is associated with profitability because of the cost, obviously, of the in-stores and the activities in-store in a service environment like luxury. So that's why is...
So methodology number one for exclusive emerging market is the combination between brick-and-mortar and online. The second one is, you're well asking, the portfolio brand. Certain markets, take India, is mainly a makeup market at the start. And so we use, in places like India, that our winners tend to be M.A.C, which is the entry price of makeup. And now The Ordinary, historically, also Clinique. But Clinique and The Ordinary, and now The Ordinary is frankly playing the biggest role. In India, became number one in a short period of time, in the Middle East, the same. So The Ordinary is an extraordinary way that within prestige, get the product in one, number one or number two in the market very fast in skincare.
So you have M.A.C. for makeup, The Ordinary and Clinique for skincare, and in fragrances, actually, interestingly, the emerging markets are at the beginning more interested in very luxury fragrances. So in many of the emerging markets, particularly in Asia, Asia emerging market has started from luxury, and then they accelerate with prestige rather than the other way around, which is very different from developed markets historical patterns. So what is the results of emerging markets? In developed markets, the brick-and-mortar distribution happened before online came on top. So the arrival of online, many developed markets, make brick-and-mortar less productive. So it was an issue for productivity because of that, an issue for profitability. In emerging markets, things are going in the right order.
You build prestige distribution in brick-and-mortar where there is productivity, and then you build on top of it, the online, where there is no access. So the combination of the two is perfect, and the arrival of online doesn't make the brick-and-mortar less productive, actually, it's just adding net extra to the brick-and-mortar. That's the second big strategy we're doing. And then, obviously, I spoke to the fact in our portfolio today, we have the excellent portfolio brands to enter in the market that they need entry price points. This market will be India, will be Mexico, will be Philippines, will be Vietnam. Actually, Vietnam is more closer to the other example I want to give. Take Thailand. Thailand is a very strong, growing emerging market, which is driven by different dynamics, driven by the middle class like the others, but also driven by tourism.
The Chinese now can go to Thailand without visa, which is incredible what's happening in this moment there. Now, in Thailand, the fastest-growing category is actually skincare; it's not makeup, and it's high-end. So Lauder and La Mer are our best brand in that kind of emerging market, where the consumer actually is higher end, higher quality, particularly skincare from day one. So depend. We have the portfolio to attack this emerging market from a luxury standpoint, also in the entry price point standpoint, depending on the development of the market, depending on the market. We tend to use more our Lauder and La Mer in Asia, and we tend to use more our The Ordinary, M.A.C, Clinique, in the West emerging markets, but frankly, it really depends case by case, and we have the solution.
And then some of these emerging markets have a very high-end middle class that buy luxury a lot, buy our Tom Ford, buy our La Mer, buy our, in the future, our Balmain, our Le Labo, et cetera, our Jo Malone, et cetera, et cetera. This, for example, is very present in the Middle East. And this class of people are also good travelers, so they are excellent customers in Travel Retail . And so we manage our Travel Retail by corridors. So it's not by geography, that's why Travel Retail is a separate team. Our Travel Retail manage the Chinese travelers corridors, the Indian traveler corridors, which, for example, to the U.K., the Brazilian traveler corridor, which believe it or not, is to Portugal, and et cetera.
In these corridors, we have assortment, aspiration, price pointing, portfolio choices, which are relevant to the traveling population that we are serving. And this is working, and it's very exciting for emerging market consumers as well. So I hope I explained the key strategies that make this a super interesting opportunity. By the way, our priority emerging markets last quarter, we are growing double digits, so this has been consistent for some time.
Okay, perfect. Time is flying, and I have too many questions still to ask. Let's pivot a little bit, and...
I'll be shorter.
We'll, we'll move to the turnaround plan, if that's okay. So, so, a little bit of background. In November, you announced the company's Profit Recovery Plan , and in February, you expanded upon that to include a restructuring program. I guess my question is, aside from recovering your margin, which is clearly very important, but aside from that, what are the other strategic goals and benefits of these two collective plans? And, and maybe you can also talk a little bit, and, and Guillaume, feel free to jump in, about how involved the rest of your management team is in, in these plans.
Yeah. So first of all, the Profit Recovery Plan is called the Profit Recovery Plan because it's designed to recover profitability. But it's also designed to recover profitability to create a much better impact on value from every point of growth we have. But we internally speaks about the Profit Recovery Plan as having three main goals: recover profitability to increase the value of our growth, first of all, and to recover margin, obviously, but also to increase the value for every growth point of the future. We remain a key growth company. That's the way we look at ourselves, that's the way we manage our business.
Obviously, the last year has been an issue in that sense, but I hope that the last 15 years proved that we are designed as a growth company that is now to find back the rate of growth that historically had in... And we are rebuilding, we can speak more about that. But the Profit Recovery Plan will serve not only the margin, but also the growth, because, first of all, we have committed to take a percentage of the gross savings. We committed the 1.1 to 1.4, and the net saving extra, they will become net extra profitability. But there are gross savings before that, that we are, which are bigger, obviously. We have committed part of the gross saving to go into increasing our consumer-facing activities. So extra spending in advertising, anything to grow growth, to push growth.
So the Profit Recovery Plan n, as it designed, on top of rebuilding margin, is going to create more resources for growth, and that's priority number one. Priority number two, the Profit Recovery Plan is helping, as we speak, us to reorganize. We are particularly at functional level, we are trying to make faster decision-making and leaner functional activities. We are reorganizing the relationship with the brand and region for faster speed. We are learning how to include, via the use of AI, the use of flexibility and agility in the decision-making by brand, by region, to respond to trends much faster. We have identified that big changes in the pre-COVID, post-COVID, which is pretty interesting.
When you think, if you make 100% the available growth in a market, the percentage of this growth that comes from short-term trends, meaning what is trending today on TikTok, has increased. And so the ability of brands to tap into not only the long-term growth dynamic, like active derm, night consumption and skincare, luxury fragrances in luxury. Those are the secular trends that we are all coming in as a company. We tap all of them. But the short-term trend, which is what in the next three months, is trending on TikTok in America, okay? Those trends today are more important than they've ever been. And so we are using the Profit Recovery Plan redesign of our processes as a way to be able to tap in more of this trend faster in every brand, in every market of the world.
Frankly, this is a driver of growth. This is a big driver of growth if we get it right, and we are getting it right. We see already some initial promising results on certain brands, and we are learning from some brands to other brands. You will not be surprised to see that our The Ordinary brand is more capable in getting into the trend of the next two weeks than our heritage legacy brand. Okay, and but we are learning in our heritage brands how to adapt some of the executional techniques, not only of our youngest brand, to make sure that all our brands tap into this new opportunity. Now, these processes are part of the Profit Recovery Plan . That's why we wanted to simplify the concept, and we call it Profit Recovery Plan .
Internally, we call it Profit, Growth, and Agility Recovery Plan , which is basically are these things we are doing. In summary, we are recuperating margin, we are re-pushing growth by more investment availability and by being able to tap into the new growth drivers that we need to improve on, and increase the ability to create speed to market and agility in the way we are organized. All of this is coming out of the Profit Recovery Plan . We are almost complete, the majority of the design phase, as we communicated as of beginning of 2025, so basically a month from now, we are entering into the execution phase, and we start seeing the results of all of this gradually over the next three years as per plan.
The reason why we will do this gradually as per plan, not all of a sudden, everything, is exactly to avoid disruption, because anyway, our business are many solid things that we don't want to disrupt. So we will do this with grace and speed, but making sure that we don't disrupt anything in the process of changing that we are establishing. Then your last part of your question, is the team involved? I mean, this is managed by the leadership team. So, the leadership team, at least most of them, have a role on their business, and they have a role in the design of the Profit Recovery Plan . I'm obviously leading each one of the specific redesign activities, but my team is helping me in the designing many.
The rest of the team, not only the leadership team, but the entire top 400 people in the organization around the world, are involved, not in the design, but in the execution of the Profit Recovery Plan . So the design is the leadership team, and obviously experts, and the execution will be all of us, each one in our brand, in our brands, in our regions, in our functions, and this is, so it's involved in really the key leadership of the company at all levels.
Okay, perfect. I can see the orange light on our time has appeared, which tells us we're in our final 5 minutes. So, you touched there upon how you hope that the 15-year track record has sort of built up the trust with investors to get them past this recent volatility. I guess my question here is, with the challenges of the past few years, it would be easy to forget that you have successfully led this business through a turnaround once before, were 15 years ago now, when you took over as CEO. Are there parallels, do you think, between the efforts to turn around the business 15 years ago, and what's required today?
So thank you for recognizing that. But to be clear, we very well. We acknowledge completely the last three years has been very, very tough. So me, the entire leadership team, don't take this easy. We are all focusing on fixing the issues and restarting our process of growth. We take this very seriously and not lightly at all. We feel the pressure of all of this, and so we share the pressure that the market feels from that. But yes, we are trying, as usual, to turn every crisis into an opportunity, and that's the focus. You're right that I joined the company, it's interesting, I took my position more or less during the 2008, 2009 crisis.
So my first idea was to gradually evolve the company and change it in the direction that then we took. And takes two years to do that. Actually, the crisis arrived in 2008, and I discovered I had six months to do that. I didn't have two years. So the good thing was that, first of all, we did a lot of change. We changed all what should have been changed anyway over time, but we changed all of it in a short period of time. And parallel of that, the same is happening.
We obviously have, even we have a Strategy and Transformation Office , which means that we as a company recognize that we need continuous transformation and over the years, but now we are accelerating all the transformation that we needed to do in a very short period of time as part of the Profit Recovery Plan , but also as part of our regular business development. And we are shortening the activities to make fundamental changes that we had to change anyway, every 10 years. The second thing that happened at the time is that we were able to change the growth algorithms. When I arrived in the company is when it was evident that China was a great opportunity. To be clear, when I arrived in the company, Chinese consumer were at $50 million of sales. Okay?
So that it was built from scratch. Travel Retail was $200 million, but America also was smaller than today and in many things. So the decision of where the strategy should bring the company growth was at that time, was in a moment of crisis, where we relooked at the growth engines of the future, understood that the historical engine on the previous 10 years were still, but like department store in U.S., to make the story short, we're not going to play the future 10 years, and we started changing, including, U.S. at the time was 80% of the business, and today, international is almost 80% of the business. So it was really a transformation of the growth engines of the company. We are doing the same now.
We are relooking over what is the right balance of growth. Why I spoke about emerging markets other than China. I spoke about the future of China, but also I spoke about the future of China in Mainland, in traveling consumers, in the cities of destination of tourism. So I spoke about the Chinese consumers as a different and more sophisticated way to look at the consumption than just Mainland. And, and, we are relooking at the power by categories. In 2008, is when we were much bigger in fragrance, prestige fragrance, and makeup than skincare, and now we are a leading skincare company. So what is the future by category, for example, I hope it is clear from our strategy that we believe that fragrances, high-end fragrances, are going for us a very important profile.
At the time, we were the low margin. By the way, at the time, we had lower margin than during this crisis, where we started at 6% margin, and we rebuild it via the mix of categories, via the gross margin refocused. The parallel is we are doing something very similar in this moment. The other parallel is the team. The team, at that time, we were working more in silos, and then we unified the team against one backbone, and the backbone has been the strategy. The Compass that you mentioned was invented, the strategic backbone, and the strategic backbone had taken the entire organization to work still with expertise by area, but more in synergy, driven by a common strategy. Now we are doing the same.
We are relooking at unifying the team, unifying the groups against the strategy, but we are learning how to do this in a much more agile model. We have been working with 10-Year Compass , 3-year strategy. Now we are learning to work with 3-month trends, which is a very different addition to our ability to compete with indie brands, on top of compete with our historical big companies, competitors. And how to compete with these new indie brands models is a big part of what we are answering strategically in this moment, and how we are staffing even the profiles of our leaders is evolving in that direction, in the expertise, and that's happening as we speak.
But the most, I think, that they have in common, at least my personal view and my personal goal, is that that moment, 2008, 2009, we made changes that then once they were completed, they provided 10 years of extraordinary growth and extraordinary margin growth, growth of the company, and development of the strategy that we put together. And we are all committed to make sure that the same things happen today, that the changes that we are doing now, that we will see life in fiscal year 2025, and after the 2025 year of implementation and transmission, as of 2026, we will have 10 years of go back to the kind of growth and the kind of profit recovery that we as a company have the ambition to have.
Perfect. I think that's a great note to end on. Thank you very much, Fabrizio, Guillaume, and thank you, everybody, for joining us.
Thank you.
Thank you.