After 50 successful years in the professional spa and beauty industry, the Thalgo brand is as strong and as innovative as ever – and there are big plans and new directions ahead, says international director Arnaud Diaz

Thalgo recently celebrated its 50th anniversary – what’s the secret to the brand’s success?
Growing a strong and competitive brand in the industry over five decades means a great deal, especially for a brand that’s delivered almost exclusively through professional beauty and wellbeing channels. Today Thalgo is in 87 countries and offers a comprehensive range of more than 260 products, excluding ongoing monthly promotions with star products.

From our clients’ perspective, they know that they can count on our loyalty, but at the same time we’re conscious there’s a risk that some of them may start to view the Thalgo brand as perhaps a little old-fashioned.

Nothing could be further from the truth! Thalgo is working on reinvigorating its whole offer, creating exciting new products, repackaging, and upgrading its training resources to help its partners become more effective in their businesses and ultimately be more profitable.

What makes Thalgo products and treatments stand out?
First of all, as a company that’s always used and developed active ingredients from the natural goodness of the ocean, the whole DNA of the Thalgo brand is totally solid.

More and more, customers are seeking treatments that give instant results, and this is only achievable with high quality, active products delivered by highly trained professionals.

What are the main areas of your business?
We have our core beauty treatments which we’re constantly evolving, and of course our extensive range of take-home retail products for spa and salon customers.

We put a huge amount of investment into research and development at our headquarters near Cannes, on the French Riviera, and increasingly we seek to treat from the inside out.

There’s really no use in having beauty treatments if you smoke 40 cigarettes a day and eat junk food all day long. That’s obviously going to impact on your health and accelerate the ageing process. That’s why we offer a comprehensive range of marine nutritional supplements, which can be tailored to needs such as detox, weight loss or anti-ageing.

Finally, we’ve recently released our outstanding professional treatment device, called iBeauty, and have other kinds of devices in development.

Can you tell us more about iBeauty?
Our iBeauty offer combines three state-of-the art skin technologies in one easy-to-use device.

Treatments are non-invasive and non-aggressive, yet deliver exceptional results. Using touchscreen programming, therapists can use sound vibrations for exfoliations and peels; sequential ultrasound for skin drainage, infusions and stimulation; and radio frequency for rejuvenation and anti-ageing treatments – all to the highest cosmetic medicine standards.

We launched iBeauty in September 2014 and the response has been excellent, with almost 700 units adopted.

A few years ago there might have been resistance from therapists who believed that hands-on treatments were always best. But there’s since been a big evolution in the market, and the demand for results-driven treatments means that devices like iBeauty are now essential, and they’ll really give your business a competitive edge in the health and beauty market.

We’ve made the product extremely safe and reliable, which is why we’re happy to offer worldwide technical support for it, rather than just limit unit sales to the domestic market.

Are there any new launches planned?
Yes we’ve just launched an exciting new brand called MCeutic, which is our first step into the cosmeceutical market. Until now, Thalgo has been known as quite a general skincare brand, but we’re increasingly taking steps to become much more customised and targeted at different customer segments with their varying skin and beauty needs.

Spa and salon visitors are looking for real results and, just like iBeauty, MCeutic is a value-added offer that can help our clients attract a whole new set of customers by using this scientific and dermatological approach to skincare.

The MCeutic range can be delivered as a tailored course of treatments which may include a renovating peel, interventions using oxygen and powerful marine ingredients, as well as corrective measures depending upon the skin’s needs.

MCeutic will also enable Thalgo to further expand its customer base by providing an attractive solution for the medi-spa market.

You also mentioned an imminent rebrand for Thalgo?
Yes we’ll be repackaging the whole of the Thalgo product range starting from the end of 2015. We aim to reposition Thalgo, moving it from the medium-to high range into the premium brand segment.

However, that does not mean that it will cost the end user more money, as value for money is increasingly important. We want to improve the perception of the brand’s value, not by packaging alone of course, but also by the results.

What support do you offer your clients?
We offer a wide range of support and one of our main missions is to impact on the traffic of our clients’ facilities.

Beauty salons and spas are generally known to be weak in terms marketing and retail, so it’s really up to Thalgo as a brand to motivate them and show them how to do it. It’s a simple fact that more training results in more sales.

We have a dedicated training facility in Paris, as well as a new comprehensive e-learning portal. Our clients can also take part in online breakfast meetings with us where we can address any problems, discuss targets and results, and deliver more specific training.

Can you tell us about a recent partnership?
We’ve recently signed a deal with the fitness chain Holmes Place in Portugal, to launch Thalgo treatments and products into their fitness centre day spas. This is a good example of how Thalgo is working hard to move away from a general approach to products and treatments, to deliver highly tailored offers depending on the type of business.

We didn’t start with our product range, we started with the Holmes Place customers, got to understand them, really listened to their needs as exercisers and sports enthusiasts, and designed a specific collection of Thalgo products and treatments around that.

What’s the future for Thalgo?
We hope to be around for another 50 years, and it will no doubt be quite different from the last 50 years!

Our core focus will remain on developing highly effective products using natural, bioactive marine ingredients, but the brand will become less generalised and more customised and technology-driven so that we can meet the changing needs of the spa and beauty marketplace.