Personal care and cosmetics maker Coty (COTY +0.00%) has seen its stock price take off more than 9% in Friday morning trading after beginning sales of its freshly acquired Kylie Skin brand in Europe today. The move is Coty's first major expansion of the celebrity brand, of which it bought a controlling stake last November.
The company is offering six products as part of the initial rollout, including a serum, toner, moisturizer, eye cream, a foaming face wash, and a walnut face scrub. The Kylie products, made in partnership with celebrity personality Kylie Jenner, focus on the luxury portion of the market, one of Coty's foremost areas of expertise and profitability.
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Coty's luxury brand division president, Simona Cattaneo, described the launch as the "next step as we accelerate the integration and build Kylie Jenner's beauty businesses into a global powerhouse brand." For her part, Kylie Jenner, who brought both her product line and her massive social media influence to the merger, said that making "my skincare line was an incredible process for me" and added about her European fans, "I'm so happy that they'll now be able to make my favorite products a part of their daily lives."
Coty's aggressive and apparently successful push to increase the reach of Kylie Beauty comes shortly after it made a deal with equity firm KKR to spin off its haircare and professional beauty segment into a stand-alone company, Wella.
Besides getting $4.3 billion for the deal, Coty shed several low-profit brands cluttering its operations. CEO Pierre-Andre Terisse remarked about the sale, "We wanted to be able to focus on the remainder of categories because we felt we had too many."
