The success of 'miracle' anti-wrinkle potion Protect & Perfect has created a shopper stampede and a quandary for the Boots the Chemists chain. From next month its parent company, Alliance Boots, will be owned by arch capitalists KKR - so should it hike up the price and make a killing?
Two months after the cream was featured on TV, it still sells out in minutes, with a factory in Nottingham working round the clock to pump out 24,000 bottles a day. Women will part with more than £100 for vials of anti-aging cream, a trend fuelling the growth of Britain's £6.2bn cosmetics industry.
Estee Lauder sells 30ml of its Re-Nutriv Ultimate for £130, while Boots charges just £16.75 for the same-sized jar of Protect & Perfect - although some has changed hands for £75 on eBay. 'New products are like diseases: there is a very strong contagion effect,' says John Roberts, professor of marketing at London Business School. 'If it sweeps through the population, then dies out, it's a fad - ideally you want consumers to stay "infected".'
Roberts highlights the perfume Joy, by Jean Patou, which used to market itself as the 'most expensive perfume in the world', increasing its price if a rival leapfrogged it. 'By being the most expensive, Joy was saying, "you can rely on us, we are extremely high quality",' he says. 'By increasing their price, Boots could increase desirability and demand.'
Protect & Perfect has been on the shelves for three years, but the day after it received a favourable report on BBC science show Horizon in April stores sold out, thousands of women joined a waiting list on the Boots website and a 'new' supercream was born.
The company has ordered extra bottles and switched from using etched glass to plain to keep production moving. But it may take another three to four weeks to satisfy the backlog.
Perversely, Alliance Boots health and beauty retail director Scott Wheway would be more inclined to lower the price. 'We serve more than half the women in Britain every week and our brand equity is more valuable than the extra hundreds of thousands of pounds we would make,' he says.
If Boots keeps its price promise, it is estimated a 100 per cent increase in serum sales would generate an extra £10m a year. A tidy sum - but not anywhere near enough to smooth the brows of the pension fund trustees.
