Based | 1999
Headquarters | Foothill Ranch, CA
High Executives:
Joni Rogers-Kante, Founder and CEO
Philippe Guerreau, President
Merchandise | Magnificence and Private Care
Across the 20-year mark, most firms are nearing the tip of their lifespan—in the event that they’ve made it that far. SeneGence marked its twentieth yr in 2019 by navigating an intense season of explosive progress, solely to be adopted by the challenges of a world pandemic. Now, because the mud of huge growth and logistical maneuvering settles, SeneGence is stronger than ever and able to tackle the world.
Agility Is Every thing
When Founder and CEO Joni Rogers-Kante launched SeneGence in 1999, it was assembly two very distinct wants—one had been slowly rising inside her for years and the opposite was extra rapid. The primary was a need to construct an organization of her personal, after experiencing super success as a marketing consultant in a direct gross sales firm. The second was the easy need to maintain her make-up wanting fabulous, no matter no matter got here her approach.
“Since 1999, the inspiration for SeneGence has not modified but it surely has advanced,” she defined. “It began when my then-toddler son would contact my face and provides me kisses. He would smudge my make-up, inflicting me to need to re-apply a number of instances a day. I assumed somebody must develop cosmetics that don’t come off. That’s what impressed SeneGence and LipSense, the primary long-lasting lip coloration available on the market. From there, our inspiration has advanced to offering merchandise which permit girls to appear and feel their finest and supply them a chance to stay their lives in love and abundance if they’re keen to work for it.”
LipSense, SeneGence’s flagship long-wear lip coloration nonetheless hasn’t “budged,” and it continues to be an anchor for the corporate’s beauty line. However SeneGence has grown to supply a lot extra. Right this moment, the corporate delights clients and distributors alike with a full vary of private care merchandise, together with long-lasting coloration cosmetics, anti-aging skincare, physique care, hair care, solar care and males’s merchandise.
From 2013 to 2017, SeneGence grew by 100% yr over yr. That spectacular progress resulted in equally spectacular rising pains. In 2016 and 2017, the corporate had bought out of many merchandise and was scrambling to maintain clients joyful; however what Joni and her workforce lacked in provide, they made up for in agility and dedication. The workforce tailored, confronted challenges collectively and emerged from that excessive season with classes realized and a good stronger tradition of belief, grace and endurance—all virtues they’d no approach of realizing they’d want in even bigger measure for what would lie forward.
Simply because the enterprise had soothed the rising pains of growth, 2020 arrived with a contemporary set of problems to navigate and issues to resolve. However by this time, Joni and her workforce have been specialists at adapting and knew how you can shift gears shortly.
“I’m notably happy with our means to be agile and adapt to wanted change,” she stated. “COVID-19 proved this. We sustained and, in some methods, thrived throughout the pandemic; realized new strategies for conducting enterprise; and adopted a few of these classes into how we conduct enterprise at present.”
“We have been prepared as a result of we’d fastened our provide chain. We’d fastened our programs by the point the pandemic got here,” Philippe Guerreau, SeneGence President, shared. “By midnight on the day of the Governor’s orders, we had dozens of vehicles going to Oklahoma with stock. We duplicated our logistics. So if California was utterly shutting every little thing down, we might nonetheless service our clients from our workplaces in Oklahoma.”
As rivals have been slimming down their product choices, SeneGence continued adapting, including new merchandise and reallocating efforts to new, immediately essential actions, comparable to manufacturing hand sanitizer for first responders.
“We’d by no means made hand sanitizer earlier than,” Guerreau shared. “However we made hand sanitizer in lower than a month. We began to drop them in each certainly one of our orders and provided them to first responders in each our California and Oklahoma communities.”
Magnificence and Enterprise Are Private
Simply as Joni designed a product and an organization round her targets and goals, SeneGence affords girls the prospect to do the identical, with a variety of merchandise that meet the totally different wants of each lady and a versatile enterprise alternative the place the sky’s the restrict.
“The fantastic thing about our business is that we’re twofold,” Guerreau defined. “One, we provide a chance in a profession for girls to have the ability to obtain monetary independence; to have the ability to have a social life that they need; and to get to know folks, make pals and be capable of drive their very own enterprise and be entrepreneurs. The second facet of it’s that we offer merchandise which might be wonderful to clients to assist them really feel extra self-confident; to really feel good; and to really feel that the merchandise are actually working.”
This private method to each magnificence and enterprise has confronted challenges all through the previous few years, as connecting on-line has changed many face-to-face actions. And whereas SeneGence has largely gone again to in-person promoting, assembly and coaching, the corporate has inspired distributors to search out the stability that works for them.
“Nothing can change direct gross sales. The one-to-one relationship—the relationships distributors have with their pals, the folks they know from church or faculty, the folks they really get to know on social media—that may by no means get replaced by brick-and-mortar firms,” Guerreau stated.
From the Inside Out
As a magnificence firm based by a wise, bold feminine entrepreneur, it solely made sense for SeneGence to associate with like-minded girls. So, the corporate’s partnership with the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageant is a pure match. In 2021, SeneGence was introduced as Miss USA’s official presenting sponsor, and that partnership continues. Very like the SeneGence alternative, the Miss USA Pageant is about a lot greater than magnificence.
“The Miss USA group is dedicated to inclusiveness and permitting girls from all backgrounds and circumstances to be the most effective model of themselves,” Rogers-Kante stated. “That is in full alignment with the merchandise and alternative supplied by SeneGence to our clients and distributors.”
SeneGence will quickly share one other approach that actual magnificence begins inside. The corporate is getting ready for the launch of vitamin merchandise that may construct magnificence from the within out. Particulars about this new product line are anticipated across the first quarter of 2023.
“After we have a look at the longer term, we ask ourselves how can we offer merchandise for folks to really feel good and assist them have good well being,” Guerreau stated. “That’s why we’re going into vitamin—as a result of we consider in each magnificence from the surface and sweetness from inside.”
As SeneGence continues to adapt, thrive and empower girls throughout the nation and around the globe, Joni and her workforce are looking forward to what’s subsequent.
“We’re open and all the time able to be taught new issues,” she stated. “Between our unbelievable house workplace workforce, who retains us rising and shifting ahead, to our distributors who preserve us on our toes, daily is one thing new and thrilling. We are challenged and excited by searching for methods to be first to market and that’s what retains us going sturdy.”
From the December 2022 challenge of Direct Promoting Information journal.
