Business and Environment

Beiersdorf is a leading international branded consumer goods company with more than 150 affiliates and around 22,000 employees. We have been offering innovative products to meet consumer wishes for more than 125 years. Our Company is divided into two areas. The focus of our business is the Consumer business segment with its comprehensive range of skin and beauty care products. The tesa business segment is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of self-adhesive product and system solutions for industry, craft businesses, and consumers.

Consumer Business Segment

Our Consumer business segment focuses on the development, manufacture, and marketing of innovative skin and beauty care products. We are excellently positioned thanks to our strong brands – above all NIVEA, the world’s biggest skin and beauty care brand. Eucerin, one of the leading international dermo-cosmetic brands, and La Prairie, the high-quality cosmetics brand in the luxury segment, are other successful core brands. Our brands enjoy outstanding market positions in a large number of countries and segments.

Our goals are clearly defined: to continuously increase our market share in all areas through qualitative growth and to further improve our strong earnings situation. We are aiming for a global market share in the skin and beauty care segment of 5.5% by 2010. We intend to achieve these objectives by continuing to successfully implement our “Passion for Success” Consumer Business Strategy. This strategy is based on the following four key components:

Superior Brands: Our innovation process ensures that we focus on developing significant product innovations and on launching them on the market rapidly and successfully. Outstanding quality, excellent displays at the point of sale, the efficient use of our marketing and sales expenditures, and high-quality advertising strengthen our brands and clearly distinguish them from the competition.

Superior Supply Chain: We manage our global activities centrally in our global Consumer Supply Chain, which is tailored to our structure, partners, and markets. This makes us fast, flexible, and cost-effective. Our Consumer Supply Chain allows us to increase our product and service quality, offer our retail partners locally tailored solutions, and deliver products to consumers even faster.

Clear Geographical Focus: We ensure we stay close to our markets worldwide and assign clear priorities. This forms the basis for our substantial global growth. In addition to Western Europe, our activities focus in particular on regions with above-average growth potential: Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, and especially the countries of China, India, Russia, and Brazil.

Superior Talent in Lean Organization: We demand and encourage performance, innovation, and optimization at all levels of the Company. Our strengths include efficiently aligned, central decision-making and management structures.
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