E-commerce is extremely important to our business. It provides us with the opportunity to launch new products online first, revealing the consumer’s reaction to the range and whether our retailers will be interested in purchasing. It allows us to understand the Aromatherapy Associates (AA) customer and this in turn helps us to support our spa and retail partners.

We sell in excess of 50,000 units a year through several third party sites including Net-a-Porter, Cult Beauty, Feelunique, John & Ginger and Travel by Amanda among others.

That said, online retail constitutes a single digit percentage of our overall business and we’re currently working on relaunching our e-commerce site. A common pitfall of beauty sites is the focus on discounts, resulting in a constant need for a promotion to drive revenue and edging a brand away from its luxury positioning. To counter this, we endeavour to drive our business through knowledge, experience and value.

The goal is to provide more educational content on the benefits of aromatherapy and to build on functionality – adding questions on health and wellness to our search facility, for example. We can also collaborate with like-minded brands to educate consumers about health and wellbeing to reach a greater audience.

Far from taking away custom from spas, online retailing raises a brand’s profile providing more opportunities for engagement. Once familiar with a brand, a customer is more likely to choose a spa where it’s stocked. Half of the relationship is built before the guest walks through the door, and if they enjoy the experience they’ll return.

Woodward joined AA this April having worked in the beauty retail sector for leading UK consumer-facing businesses such as M&S and Harrods.

Details: www.aromatherapyassociates.com

We’ve seen the growing trend for consumers to buy online first hand, with the acquisition of over half a million new customers every year. We currently work with more than 450 beauty brands, 30 of which are professional firms such as Elemis, Darphin and Decléor.

To really succeed in e-commerce, professional beauty brands need to drive awareness over and above what they do in their physical points of distribution. To do this, they need to know their customer and where to find them, particularly digitally. They also need a willingness to work with the [online] retailer, giving them the incentive to recommend their products through their media and providing them with the tools to encourage people to purchase online.

We have several tiers of partnership, from a simple listing on the website to a full package of support including a range of visibility, enhanced brand rooms and communication to audiences via email and social media.

In response to the argument that professional beauty products should [only] be sold by qualified therapists, I say that at Feelunique we pride ourselves in providing expert advice on the products we carry. Our customer care team has access to training by brands and a database of information on the products. We have a core of advisors with beauty qualifications, together with a trained pharmacist on the team. We’re soon to launch a new help and advice area so external ambassadors will be able to field questions posted by customers. We are actively recruiting qualified therapists to join this community of experts.

Founded in 2005, Feelunique is one of Europe’s largest independent online luxury beauty retailers. Lawmon himself has 18 years’ experience in retail.

Details: www.feelunique.com

The impact of the arrival of Amazon on the pro-beauty scene really does depend on the customer’s relationship with each brand. Our customers absolutely prefer a rounder experience. Yes, they love the opportunity to make a quick re-purchase and next-day delivery, and yes, they appreciate occasional promotions – which they also receive in-spa – but they have come to expect and enjoy the expert advice, regular new content and excellent customer service from us too.

Our dedicated e-commerce and digital communications channel espaskincare.com, showcases ESPA’s products, treatments and spa partners. We also retail via some of our [department store] partners’ websites, including Harvey Nichols and Liberty in London. As a rule, we actively choose not to partner with online-only retailers as these channels require unique discounted offers.

While our digital channel is growing, it remains a smaller proportion of our overall business where we have a multi-channel approach and it’s important these channels work together rather than compete. Our website, for example, isn’t purely focused on sales as this inevitably leads you down the route of discounting which damages how customers perceive you and conflicts with the experience customers receive in spa. Instead, it links to our 500-plus spa and retail partners globally, as well as providing on-tap expert education, tutorials on how to use products, blogs, spa and treatment information.

Primarily, our customers discover us and frequently re-purchase via our spa or store retail partners, but we know they also like to undertake preliminary research online at a time convenient to them, exploring products in more detail, identifying what else they might like to try, before discussing with their therapist.

ESPA has more than 3,500 therapists administering over 3 million treatments a year. Cheeseman joined the company just over a year ago.

Details: www.espaskincare.com

As a global brand, Elemis has an omni-channel distribution model. Our worldwide network of 1,600 spas and beauty salons is our biggest channel but we also trade through [high street] retailers, concept stores, TV shopping (see SB14/3 p84) – and e-commerce.

To compete in a global market you must sell online and an important part of our strategy is to make our range of products as available as possible, without compromising on service. We sell our products through our own websites – elemis.com and timetospa.com – through third-party beauty specialists such as Lookfantastic and Feelunique, as well as through ASOS and Amazon. This gives the company exposure to different types of consumers in a variety of demographics – and any time that a consumer comes into direct contact with Elemis is an opportunity to drive them back to our spas and salons.

Our digital toolset has become the key communicator through which we can talk to our customers – for many, the website constitutes the first point of contact with the brand, no matter where they end up purchasing. As consultation and education has always been at the heart of what we do, it’s vital that our website tells the Elemis story, gives recommendations on the right products for each and every person and explains how they can benefit their lifestyle.

At the same time, e-commerce enables us to gather data on shopping habits to ensure that we provide the best possible service, wherever they shop, as well as helping us to make key decisions on where we should focus our [ongoing sales and product development] efforts.

Williams has been focusing on Elemis’ digital operations since January 2016.

Details: www.elemis.com