Unique to its market, irreverent beauty products retailer
Urban Decay has resonated with customers who differentiate their styles from mainstream appearances—a philosophy to which the brand still adheres, where innovation is a top priority, no matter the product or channel.
Since L’Oréal purchased California-based Urban Decay in December 2012, Urban Decay has sought to improve their connection with existing U.S. customers, as well as connect with international customers who have for years taken an interest in Urban Decay’s products.
“There are a lot of potential customers all over the world who have been waiting for Urban Decay to branch out internationally,” said Justin BOETTCHER, Director, International Digital Development at Urban Decay. “That’s kind of what our focus has been this year—creating distribution channels in all of those countries, and providing the same brand experience on all Urban Decay sites.”
Pivoting Internationally
L’Oréal’s acquisition was a turning point for the company, as it opened doors to expansion into international markets. However, Urban Decay’s creative capacity resided in the United States, which posed challenges to them in terms of localizing content to unique international markets.
“Many of our site visitors are naturally, organically coming to urbandecay.com to learn about products, about what we’re saying about trends and how we’re using makeup in the real world; and we want to become the destination that people are already organically seeking as the central point for Urban Decay, and to be an authority in that space,” said John PERASCO, AVP – Digital, Urban Decay. “We wanted to effectively speak to our customers around the world, and that’s what we were looking for in a new CMS solution.”
For international audiences, the group partnered with OSF Digital to integrate e-Spirit’s FirstSpirit CMS very tightly with Salesforce Commerce Cloud. The CMS allows Urban Decay to manage the proliferation of content, then localize that content for each individual site, through a feature on urbandecay.com called “UD All Access.” The integrated FirstSpirit solution is now available to all of Urban Decay’s online retail channels.
“The CMS allows us to manage the proliferation of the content to the local Urban Decay sites and allows them to localize that content where applicable,” said PERASCO. “So, in some instances, nothing has to be done; in certain instances there will be some localization; there can even be a selectivity of content in some markets, those in which there are different cultural norms and sensitivities where we present only culturally appropriate content.”
Through this process, Urban Decay capitalizes on its content from the U.S.—which accounts to 80-90% of their original content, according to Urban Decay—while localizing content for specific markets and exposing customers to a consistent brand voice, within a familiar context.
The group’s most recent expansion effort has been into the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, with an ecommerce website launch in Korea and a marketing site in Hong Kong.
“There are so many layers when it comes to globalization,” said BOETTCHER. “OSF creates a global site, and then each country takes that site and creates something unique in that market, that nonetheless reflects the brand. OSF walks that line from the beginning to the end—they’re making sure that that site is brand-aligned and also right for the local market.”
