Strategic tools for the practising manager

KIT

This week: The colour cosmetic market in India

The current size of India's cosmetic and toiletries market is approximately Rs 4,275 crore.

The cosmetic segment primarily comprises colour cosmetics (face, eye, lip and nail care products), perfumes, talcum powder and deodorants. All these are very small segments.

The fastest-growing segment is colour cosmetics, accounting for around Rs 270 crore of the total market. This segment is very competitive and has a high penetration level, compared to other market segments.

Nail enamels and lipstick account for about round 65 per cent of the colour cosmetic segment.

The nail polish market is the largest at Rs 125 crore, followed by the Rs 69.75-crore lipstick market.

Revlon and L'Oreal dominate the small premium lipstick and nail enamels niches. Lipstick sales account for nearly a third of the market at Rs 94.5 crore, while the market for nail enamels is about Rs 100 crore.

The market size for nail enamels and lipstick is estimated at around Rs 27 crore each in rural areas.

Foreign brands currently constitute only 20 per cent of the market, largely because of the higher pricing these brands carry.

NUGGETS
Selections from management journals

The image of one omnipotent and charismatic CEO, alone at the top of the company, is closely held both in business theory and practice. But the authors of this article argue that under the right conditions, co-chiefs "" two or even three individuals sharing the top job "" can benefit the organisation because different leadership styles and competencies are simultaneously available to most effectively deal with differing situations.

Notable examples past and present include Google, IMAX, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs.

From their study of over 100 companies that adopted power-sharing "" sometimes productively, sometimes not "" the authors conclude that it is most likely to work when the relationship between the co-CEOs evinces complementarity, compatibility and commitment.

Further, careful design of the leaders' shared and separate responsibilities "" especially regarding communication mechanisms (for external constituents, inside the organisation and between each other) "" is required. Last, it is essential that there be co-evolution, in which each of the co-leaders shows willingness to change over time and allow their relationship to further develop.

In that spirit, the authors offer seven practical "rules of engagement" for forming power-sharing structures with good potential for success, for ensuring smooth day-to-day functioning and for adjusting these relationships as conditions change.

Leading in pairs
By Jose Luis Alvarez, Silviya Svejenova and Luis Vives
MIT Sloan Management Review, Summer 2007,
Vol. 48, No. 4
Subscribe to the article at http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is about to find out that being a CEO is a lot different than being the ceremonious Chief Yahoo, as he was called until last month.

Yang, who became Yahoo's new CEO on June 18, faces a daunting to-do list that includes reinvigorating the company, closing a performance gap with Google, thwarting challenges from social media sites such as Facebook, delivering financial results that make Wall Street cheer and charting a course for the future.

His first deadline comes in about 100 days. Knowledge@Wharton asked faculty members for advice on how Yang should handle this management challenge, which is covered in this article.

Some free advice for
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang
Knowledge@Wharton,
July 25, 2007
Read the article at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/