Brazil
www.grupoboticario.com.br

Sales: $1.0 billion

Arbo, a men’s fragrance  from O Boticário.

According to reports, Grupo Boticário’s 2021 revenues rose 14.7% and approximately 30% of its revenue came from new launches.

Group Founder Miguel Krisgner came to Brazil as a child when his parents fled Nazi Germany. He opened a small compounding pharmacy and began to dabble in cosmetic alchemy. That led to the creation of his first brand—O Boticário. Today, there are more a half dozen brands in the company’s beauty stable and Krisgner is No. 913 on Forbes’ most recent list of billionaires with an estimated net worth of $3.3 billion.

The newest Grupo Boticário brand is OUi, which it is short for “Original. Unique. Individual.” It offers a range of fragrances for men and women as well as skin care, cosmetics and bath and body products.

This year, Grupo Boticário opened a new innovation hub in Lisbon that will serve as a major center for its growing tech needs. According to Daniel Knopfholz, vice-president, president of digital and technology, Grupo Boticário has more than 2,000 professionals dedicated to the development of digital and technological solutions and innovations.

In April, Grupo Boticário announced a multimillion-dollar investment to expand production in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil.

Brazil
www.boticario.com.br

Sales: $1.2 billion

The Boticário Group brands and stores can be found throughout Brazil. The company has nearly 4,000 points of sale in 1,750 cities. It also offers products via e-commerce, through direct sales and in partnership with other major retailers. The Boticário Group is present in eight countries.

A leader in fragrances, O Boticário is a beloved beauty brand in Brazil with a complete portfolio. Among them, Malbec stands out as the best-selling fragrance in the country. In cosmetics, the Eudora line is made for women who create their own stories. It is a multi-channel company, focused on direct sales, in addition to their own stores, online and offline. Another cosmetic offering is quem disse, berenice?, a makeup specialty brand with a wide range of color selections.

Noteworthy industry news hails from the heart of the company—the factory. In October 2020, Grupo Boticário deployed Vuzix M400 Smart Glasses to its Camacari manufacturing facility in Bahia, Brazil to provide production monitoring and remote support. Prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company would have specialists from its São José dos Pinhais facility make weekly 1500-mile trips to the Camaçari plant, to monitor tests during product development or initial production.

Due to COVID-19, travel was stopped in order to ensure employee safety, but the monitoring need remained. The Vuzix M400 glasses enabled remote specialists in product development to establish direct connections with the factory operators, who receive expert audio and video support while executing production.

Brazil
www.boticario.com.br
Sales: $3.8 billion

Last year sales rose 9%, but company executives aren’t just keeping track of their own ledger, they have an eye on arch-rival Natura &Co’s numbers as well. Natura acquired Avon Products last year, and now Boticário is considering making some acquisitions of its own.

“It is our duty to evaluate everything out there in the market,” said CEO Artur Grynbaum.

At one point during the past year, Boticário was said to be in the running for Coty Inc., but of course, the deal never materialized. Still, there were deals to be made. In November, Boticário acquired Beleza na Web, an online platform with sales of about $100 million.

With more than 4,000 stores in Brazil and operations in more than 15 countries, Grupo Boticário plans to invest $80-92 million this year in its growing empire.

The moves come at a time when Brazil is reeling from coronavirus and a lingering economic downturn. The World Bank forecasts that Brazil’s economy will shrink 8% this year as a COVID-19 shutdown weighs heavily on businesses and consumers. Some analysts have suggested that Brazil’s recession could shrink the economy by as much as 10% this year. Analysts say that at the center of the crisis are Brazil’s millions of small businesses. Despite employing more than half of the working population (the country’s unemployment rate in Q1 was 12.2%), small business owners have complained about being unable to access enough credit to withstand the economic shutdown.

Brazil
www.boticario.com.br

Sales: $3.6 billion.

Boticario Group sales rose 7% last year, while Vult sales increased 11%. The company has operated in Bahia since 2014 and today it is one of the largest cosmetic production facilities in the country. One of the company’s highlights is robots capable of putting caps on fragrances. Modern machinery also facilitates information management, statistics monitoring and rapid diagnostics, both remote and in real time. As part of the Boticário Group’s sustainability strategy, the Bahia plants are LEED certified.

The Camaçari unit has the capacity to produce up to 150 million items a year, while the distribution center in São Gonçalo dos Campos can handle more than 1.4 million products a day.

In other eco moves, Grupo Boticário uses Ecoálcool, a more sustainable version of traditional alcohol in its formulations. Ecoálcool is the commercial name for the second-generation ethanol (E2G), developed and produced by Raízen. It is made from the reuse of sugarcane bagasse, a by-product of conventional ethanol production and sugar. This technology, besides allowing an integral use of the cane, reduces greenhouse gas emissions responsible for the planet’s climate change.

Boticario Group launched the I.A.R.A. (Environmental Risk Assessment Index) to calculate the impact of rinse-off products such as shampoos, conditioners and soaps on aquatic ecosystems. It quantifies the impact of raw materials that can be harmful to the water system and thus subsidizes the researchers to replace or to reduce them.

The company recently received the Cruelty Free seal, granted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).