658 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS population had now been softened up to receive willingly the many pro- ducts prepared especially for it. I suppose eventually that the male deodorants and pre- and after-shave lotions will be considered a necessity and will figure, therefore, in the cost of living index. Eye cosmetics took off, crude soap bases were dropped and Factor's Eyelash make-up was no longer known as Factor's Rimmell. The aerosol age had also dawned and rapid strides were made because of this new method of dispensing the industry's products. There was the complete elimination of machine permanent waving, the rise and fall of packeted home permanent waving, and the advent of many and vast ranges of hair preparations and lacquers. The industry had now passed out of the "natural look" phase and had become part of the fashion indus- try. It was no longer a question of facial colour harmony, but rather of spring and autumn fashion shade promotion. Fashion houses were getting on the cosmetic band-wagon. Direct selling to the consumer, poo pooed by the pundits in the 40's, was about to become a very big part of the business and cosmetics were now being made for the whole body and not just for the pretty face. The sad thing about this era was that the entrepreneurs were on their way out. The original personalities were decreasing in number nepotism perpetrated by the original pioneers began to take its toll. There had been little or no thought given to the general training of dedicated "follow-up" management and, as a consequence, we see in the 50's and 60's a gradual elimination of the entrepreneurial personalities and the creation of the professional management cult, reaching the stage when that new Merlin of modern business, the marketing man, comes completely into his devious own. In the 30's, it was Radio Luxembourg in the 60's, which I call the Conglomerate era, it is television, with fantastic amounts spent on location with glorious "birds". But the industry still progressed, this time with the personalities for the most part gone, and the results of their nepotism and neglect of follow-through management laying it wide open to the avaricious eyes of the pharmaceutical industry, or the financial wizards of Wall Street. This is why I call the 60's the Conglomerate period. The industry is now a marketing man's dream. It is glamorous, its products a necessity as well as a luxury, its growth potentially still great and its profitability rewarding. But the number of concerns in it is decreas- ing. Go-ahead cosmetic empires are creating new competitive ranges under different names, and even different factories, to embrace the whole "wealth

AN INDUSTRIALIST LOOKS AT THE COSMETIC INDUSTRY {359 range" of consumers. Some are becoming conglomerates, in that they are extending themselves into packaging, the rag trade, haute couture, plastics, and pharmaceuticals. I think that this would be the way I •vould approach the future, if I were still in the industry proper, because this would be taking the industry's entrepreneurial flair into rather staid but solid fields. But we also have the reverse operation where pharmaceutical companies have made incursions into this fashion industry. Well-known cosmetic names are now divisions of ethical houses. Strange professional management is going into the glamour field. More and more international pharma- ceutical houses are looking for acquisitions in the cosmetic industry, as its pioneering personalities fade away. Has this really worked so far? Will it work in the future? I do not know the answers, but the pharmaceutical industry's pressing necessity in the United Kingdom to safeguard its high margins against the implications of the Sainsbury Report may well cause us to see more of this type of merger. But now there is a third tendency. Your industry is such a good one that some concerns in other fields, whose original businesses have declined or are under attack, have in effect become financial institutions and are fast turning themselves into conglomerates. The last purely British com- pany of size and world fame has been joined with three other smaller houses under the umbrella of a financial conglomerate. Will it work? For the sake of your business and mine I hope it does, but how far financial mergers will go, or can go, without detriment to the famous names of this fashion industry has yet to be seen. The conglomerate or merger phase in which you find yourselves at the moment is a western world phenomenon of the 60's, with the British government fast becoming the biggest conglomerate of the lot. But in my view, mergers should not exist solely so that clever financiers can make money by rape exercises or stock market manipulation. They should be nationally and internationally, commercially and socially beneficial to all. They can - and should - be used to improve efficiency and production, and to prod lethargic managements to do better by funnelling capital into enterprises where it can be more profitably used. But beware - this does not alxvays happen and sometimes profitable companies, component parts of conglomerates, are used to perpetuate the existence of unprofitable ones and this is why conglomerates become sus- pect.