Revlon () is an American
cosmetics company.
History
Revlon was founded in the midst of the
Great Depression, 1932, by
Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed the "L" in the REVLON name.
Starting with a single product — a new type of
nail enamel — the three founders pooled their resources and developed a unique
manufacturing process. Using
pigments instead of
dyes, Revlon developed a variety of new shades of opaque nail enamel. Successful in salons from the start, in 1937 Revlon started selling the polishes in
department stores and
drug stores. In six years the company became a multimillion dollar organization. By 1940, Revlon offered an entire manicure line, and added
lipstick to the collection. During World War II Revlon created makeup and related products for the U.S. Army, which was honored in 1944 with the
Army-Navy ‘E’ Award for Excellence.
1940s
By the end of the war, Revlon listed itself as one of America's top five cosmetic houses. Expanding its capabilities, the company bought
Graef & Schmidt, a cutlery manufacturer seized by the government in 1943 because of German business ties. This acquisition made it possible for Revlon to produce its own manicure and pedicure instruments, instead of buying them from outside supply sources.
Up until the 1940s, Revlon's magazine ads were drawn by hand and mostly in black and white. Beginning in 1945, Revlon began launching stunning, full-color, photographic advertisements in major magazines and stores across the country. Revlon introduced matching nail polish and lipsticks with exotic and unique names. These ads were taken by the top fashion photographers of the day including
Richard Avedon ,
Cecil Beaton, and
John Rawlings. Some of these ads were for "Paint the Town Pink" and 1945's "Fatal Apple" with Dorian Leigh. In 1947 Revlon introduced "Bachelor's Carnation" and in 1948, "Sweet Talk,"
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1950s
"Fire and Ice" and Dorian Leigh
In 1950, Revlon introduced a red lipstick and nail enamel called "Where's the Fire?" Revlon used the word "fire" again later in their "Fire and Ice" ads.
One of the world's first supermodels,
Dorian Leigh, starred in some of Revlon's most memorable advertisements of all time. In 1946, Dorian was covered in purple flowers and wrapped in a pale purple sheet for "Ultra Violet." In 1947, Dorian appeared in "Fashion Plate." In 1953, at the age of 36, she appeared in "Cherries in the Snow." Later that year she appeared in the legendary "Fire and Ice" ad shot by Richard Avedon.
Originally, Dorian appeared in a tight, silver-beaded dress with an enormous red wrap. Her black hair had a silver swirl in it and she had her hands, with long red nails, positioned in front of her breasts. Charles Revson rejected Avedon's original ad as "too sexual." They re-shot the ad, this time with her open hand in front of one hip, the other in front of her cheek.
The advertisement became Madison Avenue legend because of the full-page quiz next to the sensual ad. The ad asked, "Are You Made For 'Fire and Ice.'" It further asked:
"What is the American girl made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice? Not since the days of the Gibson Girl! There's a new American beauty. . . she's tease and temptress, siren and gamin, dynamic and demure. Men find her slightly, delightfully baffling. Sometimes a little maddening. Yet they admit she's easily the most exciting woman in all the world! She's the 1952 American beauty, with a foolproof formula for melting the male! She's the 'Fire and Ice' girl. (Are you?)
In November 1955, Revlon went public. The
IPO price was $12 per share, but it reached $30 per share within 8 weeks.
Suzy Parker
Dorian Leigh's 15-years younger supermodel sister,
Suzy Parker, also shot numerous Revlon magazines ads. Unlike Leigh, whom Charles Revson was smitten with and wanted to perhaps marry, Revson supposedly hated Parker. Parker said,
"I would do the Revlon ads with Dick [Richard Avedon]. I never had a contract. What Mr. Revson offered me was such peanuts I told him to go take a flying jump. But I always ended up doing retakes for all these other models. Revson got so mad that he said, 'You will not use Suzy Parker.' So they gave me these weird names like Bubbles Macao, and we'd be doing it in the middle of the night, the ninth retake after eight other models."
One of these re-takes involved holding on to an out-of-control white horse at night, on a beach.
Some famous Revlon ads red-headed Parker was featured in were: "Love Pat," 1956's "Futurama," and "Satin Set," 1957's "Touch-and-Glow," 1959's "Colors Unlimited," 1961's "Fresh Emeralds," and "Colors Avant Garde."
1960s
In the 1960s, with both supermodel sisters Dorian Leigh and Suzy Parker retired, Revlon ads featured a number of different models. Some ads were 1963's "Jungle Peach," 1964's "La Dolce Look," 1965's "The Worldly Young Innocents," and 1968's "Moon Drops."
In the 1960s, Charles Revson segmented Revlon Inc into different divisions, each focusing on a different market. He borrowed this strategy from
General Motors. Each division had its own target customer:
Princess Marcella Borghese was an upscale, international line;
Ultima II was the premium line;
Revlon was the largest and most popular-priced brand;
Natural Wonder was aimed at the junior customer;
Moon Drops was aimed at dry skins; and
Etherea was a hypo-allergenic brand. There is an unsettled debate as to whether
Estée Lauder stole Revson's idea and created
Clinique, or the other way around. However, there is no debate which hypo-allergenic line became successful.
Revlon's non-beauty ventures were not so successful, either.
In 1957, Revlon acquired
Knomark, a shoe-polish company, and sold its shoe-polish line
Esquire Shoe Polish in 1969. Other poorly chosen acquisitions, such as
Ty-D-Bol, the maker of toiler cleansers, and a 27 percent interest in the
Schick electric shaver company were also soon discarded.
Evan Picone, a women's sportswear manufacturer which came with a price tag of $12 million in 1962, was sold back to one of the original partners four years later for $1 million. However, the 1967 acquisition of
U.S. Vitamin and Pharmaceutical Corporation did make Revlon, for a while, a leader in
diabetes drugs.
The company had begun to market its products overseas at the end of the 1950s. By 1962, when Revlon debuted in Japan, there were subsidiaries in France, Italy, Argentina, Mexico, and Asia. Revlon's entrance into the Japanese market was typical of its international sales strategy. Instead of adapting its ads and using Japanese models, Revlon chose to use its basic U.S. advertising and models. Japanese women loved the American look, and the success of this bold approach was reflected in the 1962 sales figures, which were almost $164 million.
In 1968, Revlon introduced Eterna27, the first cosmetic cream with an
estrogen precursor called
Progenitin (pregenolone acetate), as well as introducing the world's first American fashion designer fragrance,
Norman Norell. Later, Revlon launched
Braggi and
Pub for men, and a line of wig maintenance products called Wig Wonder.
1970s
In 1970 Revlon acquired the
Mitchum line of deodorants.
In 1973, Revlon introduced
Charlie, a fragrance designed for the working woman's budget. Geared to the under-30 market, Charlie model
Shelley Hack in
Ralph Lauren clothes, personified the independent woman of the 1970s. This is the first perfume ad to feature a woman wearing pants. Charlie was an instant success, helping to raise Revlon's net sales figures to $506 million for 1973 and to almost $606 million the following year. Shelley Hack appeared on
Oprah in 2007 to talk about the power of these Charlie print and commercial ads. Their follow-up fragrance,
Jontue, quickly became the number two best seller.
Also in 1973, model
Lauren Hutton signed the first exclusive modeling contact ever. She agreed to pose for Revlon's Ultima line for $400,000 for two years. The following year, Hutton appeared on the cover of
Newsweek because of her ground-breaking cosmetics contract.
In 1975, Charles Revson died.
Michel Bergerac, who Revson had hired as President of the company, continued to grow the organization. Revlon acquired
Coburn Optical Industries, an Oklahoma-based manufacturer of ophthalmic and optical processing equipment and supplies.
Barnes-Hind, the largest U.S. marketer of hard contact lens solutions, was bought in 1976 and strengthened Revlon's share of the eye-care market. Revlon purchased
Armour Pharmaceutical Company, a division of
Armour and Company, from
The Greyhound Corporation in 1977. Other acquisitions included the Lewis-Howe Company, makers of
Tums antacid in 1978. These health-care operations helped sales figures to pass the $1 billion mark in 1977, bringing total sales to $1.7 billion in 1979.
1980s
By the mid-1980s, Revlon's health-care companies, rather than Revlon's beauty concerns, were innovating and expanding. Reluctant to initiate beauty-product development, Revlon lost ground to
Estée Lauder. Lauder was a privately held company whose marketing strategy of high prices with accompanying gifts, were featured in upscale department stores, not drugstores where Revlon was found. Estee Lauder's "high-class" ads also featured only one supermodel,
Paulina Porizkova, shot by famous Chicago fashion photographer,
Victor Skrebneski. This caused Revlon's share to drop from 20 percent to 10 percent of department store cosmetics sales. Sales at the drugstore also declined as Revlon lost share to Noxell's
Cover Girl brand (advertised by
Christie Brinkley).
Revlon compensated with more acquisitions;
Max Factor,
Ellen Betrix,
Charles of the Ritz,
Germaine Monteil,
Almay,
Fermodyl,
Lancaster,
Aziza, and
Halston. The 1977 acquisition of
Carlos Colomer, a Spanish professional beauty supply distributor, brought
Fermodyl and
Roux and helped introduce Revlon to the world of ethnic care:
Creme of Nature,
Realistic,
Lovely Color and
Milk and Honey became highly successful international. In 1983 the company attempted an unsuccessful
hostile takeover of
Gillette.
On November 5, 1985, at a price of $58 per share, totaling $2.7 billion, Revlon was sold to
Pantry Pride (later renamed to Revlon Group, Inc.), a subsidiary of
Ronald Perelman's
MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings. The highly leveraged buyout--engineered with the help of junk bond king
Michael P. Milken--saddled Revlon with a huge $2.9 billion debt load, which became an albatross around the company's neck for years to come. Pantry Pride Inc. offered to buy any or all of Revlon's 38.2 million outstanding shares for $47.5 a share when its street price stood at $45 a share. Initially rejected, he repeatedly raised his offer until it reached $53 a share while fighting Revlon's management every step of the way.
Forstmann Little & Company swooped in at $56 a share, a brief public bidding war ensued, and Perelman triumphed with an offer of $58 a share. Perelman paid $1.8 billion to Revlon's shareholders, but he also paid $900 million of other costs associated with the purchase.
Perelman had Revlon sell four divisions: two for $1 billion, the vision care division for $574 million, and the National Health Laboratories division which became a publicly owned corporation in 1988. Additional make-up lines were purchased for Revlon:
Max Factor in 1987 and
Betrix in 1989, later sold to
Procter & Gamble in 1991.
2000s
Despite the enormously successful campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s featuring models, Revlon decided to drop almost all fashion models and to instead focus on female movie stars. Their ads featured a number of different actresses including
Kate Bosworth,
Jaime King,
Halle Berry (she has appeared in dozens of Revlon ads since 1996),
Susan Sarandon,
Melanie Griffith,
Julianne Moore,
Eva Mendes,
Jessica Alba,
Jennifer Connelly,
Beau Garrett, and
Jessica Biel. In 2009, Australian supermodel
Elle MacPherson became a new spokesmodel for the company.
As of June 2007, Revlon has reported 27 consistent quarterly losses, with only minor relief through selling off divisions and businesses. Today Revlon is but a fraction of the size it once was, only housing the Revlon,
Almay,
Mitchum, and
Jeanne Gatineau lines. It still owns Ultima II, which is no longer sold in North America, and is rumored to be next on the chopping block.
Ownership
Corporate governance
Current members of the
board of directors of Revlon are: Alan Bernikow, Paul Bohan, Meyer Feldberg, Debra Lee, David Kennedy,
Ronald Perelman, Linda Robinson, Barry Schwartz, Kathi Seifert, and Ken Wolf
Subsidiaries
Domestic
- Almay, Inc., a Delaware corporation
- Charles of the Ritz Group Ltd., a Delaware corporation
- Charles Revson Inc., a New York corporation
- Cosmetics & More Inc., a Delaware corporation
- North America Revsale Inc., a New York corporation
- PPI Two Corporation, a Delaware corporation
- Revlon Consumer Corp., a Delaware corporation
- Revlon Consumer Products Corporation, a Delaware corporation
- Revlon Development Corp., a Delaware corporation
- Revlon Government Sales, Inc., a Delaware corporation
- Revlon International Corporation, a Delaware corporation
- Revlon Products Corp., a Delaware corporation
- Revlon Real Estate Corporation, a Delaware corporation
- RIROS Corporation, a New York corporation
- RIROS Group Inc., a Delaware corporation
Foreign Subsidiaries
- ACN 000 189 186 Pty. Limited (Australia)
- CEIL — Comercio e Distribuidora Ltda. (Brazil)
- Cendico B.V. (Netherlands)
- Deutsche Revlon GmbH (Germany)
- European Beauty Products S.L. (Spain)
- Européenne de Produits de Beauté S.A.S. (France)
- New Revlon Argentina S.A. (Argentina)
- Productos Cosmeticos de Revlon, S.A. (Guatemala)
- Promethean Insurance Limited (Bermuda)
- REMEA 2 B.V. (Netherlands)
- Revlon Australia Pty Limited (Australia)
- Revlon Beauty Products, S.L. (Spain)
- Revlon B.V. (Netherlands)
- Revlon Canada Inc. (Canada)
- Revlon Chile S.A. (Chile)
- Revlon China Holdings Limited (Cayman Islands)
- Revlon Europe, Middle East and Africa Ltd. (Bermuda)
- Revlon Group Limited (United Kingdom)
- Revlon (Hong Kong) Limited (Hong Kong)
- Revlon (Israel) Limited (Israel)
- Revlon Kabushiki Kaisha (Japan)
- Revlon Manufacturing Ltd. (Bermuda)
- Revlon Mauritius Ltd. (Mauritius)
- Revlon New Zealand Limited (New Zealand)
- Revlon Offshore Limited (Bermuda)
- Revlon Overseas Corporation, C.A. (Venezuela)
- Revlon Pension Trustee Company (U.K.) Limited (United Kingdom)
- Revlon (Puerto Rico) Inc. (Puerto Rico)
- Revlon Real Estate Kabushiki Kaisha (Japan)
- Revlon, S.A. de C.V. (Mexico)
- Revlon (Shanghai) Limited (China)
- Revlon South Africa (Proprietary) Limited (South Africa)
