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Arbonne Retrenches Upon Bankruptcy Exit
Direct-sales company Arbonne International LLC has exited bankruptcy with a bang by releasing its largest new product offering of some 150 skin care and makeup stockkeeping units.
Arbonne revamped RE9 Advanced's packaging and formula, a risky proposition given the antiaging skin care line constituted about 40 percent of its business since launching seven years ago. Arbonne also phased out cosmetics labels About Face and Virtual Illusion in favor of a more sophisticated Arbonne Cosmetics lineup, and replaced men's collection NutriMenC RE9 with RE9 Advanced for Men skin care and grooming items.
The flurry of product activity was stoked by Arbonne's senior vice president of product development, Peter Matravers, an industry veteran influential in the creation of Neutrogena's T/Gel, and director of product marketing Roeya Badri Vaughan, a former Mattel brand manager, who both joined Arbonne about a year ago. They seized upon the opportunity to modernize Arbonne's product portfolio and excite a field of nearly 700,000 direct-sales consultants as the Irvine, Calif.-based company left a rocky period behind with the emergence of parent Natural Products Group LLC from Chapter 11 protection in March.
The business was getting soft and, because RE9...