AMV.BBDO scoops £10m launch of ‘clicks and mortar’ beauty venture

Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO has won an advertising account, worth up to &£10m, for Beautyspy, a new Internet, retail and mail-order cosmetics and toiletries company run by, among others, former Coty marketer Amy Gordinier.

Beautyspy is expected to launch in the UK and Germany in the second week in June. It will launch its website first, followed by a mail-order catalogue in September and the first of its retail stores in Germany this October.

Beautyspy director of marketing Gordinier is one of five founders of the company.

She was previously worldwide director of marketing for Coty Lancaster’s Manifesto range of colour cosmetics, developed with actress Isabella Rossellini. Gordinier has also worked for Revlon and L’Oréal.

AMV. BBDO will create a print advertising campaign, to run across the UK and Germany, which will break in October. New PHD is handling the media account.

The Beautyspy catalogue will be delivered with a women’s fashion magazine in September. The company intends to offer premium range, trendy cosmetics from independent companies that are not widely available in Europe.

The plan is for the first UK retail store to open in the first quarter of 2001 and the aim is for 20 stores to open across the two countries within five years.

Beautyspy will subsequently launch in France.

Gordinier says: “We believe in the retail concept, but focused on the Internet to get funding and as a fast way to build our brand and presence.”