Jonathan Zrihen has seen a lot in the 30-plus years he’s worked for Clarins Group. Much of that was writing on the wall — foresight into how the art of making and selling high-end skincare would change, and how Clarins could stay ahead.
The CEO and president — who joined fresh out of college as a marketing intern in 1994 — acted on much of it. He pushed the company to build up its direct-to-consumer (DTC) business when he began noticing cracks in the wholesale model. Early on, he recognized that ingredients were becoming a focal point for discerning consumers, which spurred Clarins to invest more in farm land where it could cultivate its own botanicals. He also saw that the more Clarins asked its consumers for their data, the more transparency they would expect in return, prompting the company to invest in a blockchain-based platform called Trust, where anyone can trace the Clarins supply chain from start to end.
He also knew that beauty consumers value personalized advice from experts. Today, 55% of Clarins’s 8,000-person workforce are sales consultants that work closely with its clients.
“Beauty therapists, estheticians, beauty coaches, whatever you call them — they’re touching everyday consumers. And I think that creates this link that is so unique about Clarins,” Zrihen says. Personally, he prefers beauty consultants. “We’re maybe not the best in marketing, we’re maybe not the best in media, but we have this client relationship, everywhere around the world.”
Clarins is a 71-year-old family-owned business, and its main challenge now is staying competitive in a beauty industry that has changed rapidly since Jacques Courtin-Clarins founded it in 1954. The company did €2 billion in sales this year, a 2% increase over last. It’s much smaller than the major beauty groups (L’Oréal Group, by comparison, accrued over $50 billion in sales in 2024), and as a privately owned company, innovation is developed over five to 10 years, not financial quarters. But that risks placing Clarins on the backfoot in a beauty industry increasingly dominated by trends.
With its emphasis on high-grade, natural ingredients, an obsession with customer service and insights, and a global footprint, Clarins plans to grow its influence in the beauty space — one that’s obsessed with clean, high-performing ingredients. “That’s our sweet spot,” Zrihen says.
Vogue: You’ve worked across multiple regions for Clarins, a French company that does most of its business outside France, and you played a critical role in taking the company global. What was that like, especially for a family-owned firm?
The beauty of working for a global company is the ability to see the trends that will have a global impact eventually, because they are irreversible. For example, while managing the US about 15 years ago, I saw the rise of digital penetration within the cosmetic industry, and I saw the importance of developing an e-commerce strategy. Our online business in the US paved the way for accelerating e-commerce globally.
I think that’s key in managing an international brand. It puts you in this position where, on one hand, you have to prepare different countries for what’s coming. So with e-commerce, I told my team in Europe, ‘You’re doing 2% of your sales via e-commerce, that’s not going to last. You’re going to see department stores collapse, you’re going to see digital rising. So you have to prepare yourself.’ And then you have to approach it with a bit of humility. It’s about listening to the local teams and empowering them to find what will resonate locally. And I would say that Clarins has been quite successful in skincare nearly everywhere around the world.
Vogue: What’s behind that success, in your opinion?
The reason why we play everywhere is that people don’t question the quality of our products. We have very strong innovation because we spend a lot of money on it. It’s always been the driving force behind the brand. So we work very hard to bring innovation to the market every year, in [the form of] effective, quality product.
Very early, we decided to buy land where we could grow our own botanicals. [More than 20%] of the 200 plants that we use in all our products are coming from our own farms. And when we do this kind of thing, we don’t do it for the marketing point of view by just saying, ‘Oh look, we have one product that we plant.’ And customers can sense that authenticity.
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We also express that our consumers are so much at the heart of everything that we do. Every market allocates a lot of money to train and educate their staff. So everybody that interacts with our consumers is highly trained, and there is very strong customer service that resonates globally.
Vogue: Clarins uses plant-based ingredients. Do you consider Clarins to be a clean beauty company?
I like the word conscious more than clean. We’ve just been certified by B Corp, who told us we’re one of the biggest companies that have been certified. Close to 90% of our ingredients are organic. We have very strong integrity. So for that, I would say we are clean, because we know where our ingredients are coming from, we know how they’ve been cultivated, we know how safe they are. And we have our own lab and we have our own farms and we do our own tests. The problem with many, many brands is that they basically buy ingredients off the shelves, and start claiming it’s clean, so it becomes a marketing thing.
So I prefer the way we approach things with integrity, authenticity and transparency, rather than just saying, ‘Oh, I need to have a label that says I’m a clean brand.’ We’re labeled green more than clean because all our products are made with great-quality, high-grade ingredients. I think as long as you are transparent and you offer high-quality products, with high-quality ingredients; you measure the impact that this can have on people’s skin; and you measure that you have the safest and yet the most efficient products, then I think you are a clean brand.
Vogue: Beyond clean beauty, what do customers want today? And how does Clarins — which doesn’t seem like a trend-driven brand — respond to trends?
Clarins has always positioned itself as a beauty companion throughout the ages, because the reality is that we are all getting older and we know what’s going to happen. The good thing and the new thing is that people now are getting older and living much longer. So that’s why this word ‘longevity’ is everywhere: consumers are living longer and they want to age well. So it’s not only about fighting wrinkles, they want to make sure that they will look good at 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80. And going even further, they’re going to use procedures, some of them might be invasive or they may be a little less invasive — lasers, Botox, surgery. And as a cosmetic brand, instead of trying to say it’s either/or, we are going to develop products that are compatible with procedures.
Then, you have everything that’s related to beauty, tech and AI. We developed what we call an AI-powered skin observer that can analyze several parts of your skin, combined with the education of our beauty advisor, to make personalized recommendations.
Vogue: How do you think about innovation as the head of a family-owned, decades-old brand?
It’s crucial. We have a unique way of innovating, which is what we call ‘permanent innovation’, which basically when a product is released, we keep working on it like Apple does with the iPhone — but we’ve been doing this for 70 years. So as soon as a product is released, we know it will be enriched by feedback, by the evolution of consumer lifestyles and by new discoveries.
For example, next year will probably see the most exciting launch that we’re going to do in the US, which is an upgrade of of our Extra-Firming range. We made discoveries that could boost collagen production from research that has happened over the last five years. We realize that a lot of brands have been working on trying to increase and boost the production of collagen, which is great. But we have a polypeptide collagen molecule that we develop in-house, which will now be part of the Extra-Firming line. This just shows that innovation for us is kind of part of our daily approach of developing products.
Vogue: You said that Clarins may not be the best at marketing. How are you trying to reach the next generation of customers?
We used to have a playbook. And this playbook — with our 4,000 salespeople around the world — has evolved throughout the years because the rise of social media and the rise of influencer marketing has pretty radically changed the way we approach consumer interaction. We used to trust that a mother that was telling their daughter about our products, buying them for her. We used to trust that beauty advisors would give you recommendations when you would go into the store. The reality now is you have influencers that are really trusted. So the question is how do we approach that and maintain the same level of integrity and authenticity. It’s not just being paid to say, this is a great product. We’re trying to educate. And that changes the way we spend our money, the way we invest. It s not the same playbook anymore.
We’ve also seen a polarization in price sensitivity. A lot of young consumers don’t want to spend a lot. But then a lot of consumers are interested in spending a bit more, because with all the aesthetic procedures they do, they’re spending a lot of money already in this field. It’s a bit like what’s happening with shoes and bags. Some years ago, the ceiling of $100 was expensive. It’s not anymore. So we’re trying to cater to the needs of our consumers who are willing to spend more, without forgetting that we need to prepare for the next 50 years, so we need to recruit customers that don’t have the same purchasing power.
And the other part as a CEO is to really try to integrate how AI is going to basically power the company. I mean, I’m not that old, but I’ve already seen the digital revolution and transformation.
We are at the eve of seeing a new one with AI. As a CEO, my responsibility is to make sure that I will be able to leverage it with the appreciation of the pros and the cons. So we are still trying to figure [things] out, but we are already seeing major improvements.
