Kim Kardashian West and Coty Inc. — which acquired a 20 percent stake in her KKW Beauty brand in June 2020 in a $200 million deal — are gearing up to launch a skin care label, Coty chief executive Sue Y. Nabi told BoF. The line will launch in the fourth quarter of Coty’s fiscal year 2022, which runs from Apr. 1 to Jun. 30.

A Kardashian West-led skin care line has been in the works since Coty’s acquisition of a minority stake in the star’s beauty brand in 2020 — at the time, the company announced that a skin care line was on the horizon for the 2022 fiscal year. In April 2021, Kardashian West filed an application to trademark the name SKKN by Kim.

Kardashian West wound down her original brand, KKW Beauty, in August 2021, to prepare for a relaunch. In a post on Instagram, she said that following the pause, she would unveil a “completely new brand with new formulas that are more modern, innovative and packaged in an elevated and sustainable new look.”

This coming skin care line is the first element of the new brand that Coty is unveiling. For now, Nabi said Kardashian West’s brand will not be venturing back into colour cosmetics.

“We are focusing on skin care,” said Nabi. “We really wanted to create something disruptive and top-notch in terms of quality and ingredients. So we are focusing on making this a huge success and then we will see for the other categories later.”

The move is part of a larger strategy on Coty’s part to double down on skin care — following wider industry trends, which has seen skin care sales outpace cosmetics throughout the duration of the pandemic. Last year, it debuted CoverGirl skin care, as well as invested in Orveda, a prestige skin brand focused on the skin’s microbiome. In November 2021, Coty also hired Unilever and Shiseido veteran Dr. Shimei Fan as its first chief scientific officer.

“It’s really going to be the year of skincare at Coty,” said Nabi. “We will have a lot a lot of initiatives happening almost at every price, in every region, in skin care.”

Coty’s investment in skin care comes at a moment when the company overall is seeing some of its strongest performance in years. In its earnings report, released on Tuesday, Coty announced that it had gained global market share for the first time in five years. It reported that overall sales increased 12 percent during the second quarter of its 2022 fiscal year, which ended Dec. 31. Nabi singled out Coty’s performance in the American and Chinese markets, as well as within travel retail, as the primary drivers of this growth.

Its prestige segment, another area of focus for the company, which operates fragrance licenses for luxury labels including Gucci, Burberry and Chloé, also grew 12 percent. Its consumer beauty segment, which accounts for brands like CoverGirl, Rimmel and Max Factor, grew 11 percent.

“This huge momentum in sales, both in prestige, but also in consumer beauty has allowed us to have a robust gross margin expansion, that helps us to fuel media reinvestment and profit growth,” said Nabi. “This gave us the confidence to update our fiscal 2022 sales that are now expected at the upper end of the guidance.”

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