Andrew Stanleick, the new managing director of  L’Oreal Malaysia, is a man of many passions — his work at the French beauty conglomerate, good food, travel and music. He opens up to Elaine Lau about the resilient health and beauty industry, his vision for the company and how the love of food is a great connector of people.

You can more or less judge how easily a foreigner will acclimatise to life in Malaysia by whether or not he or she can stomach and savour the food. Going by this one criterion, Andrew Stanleick, the new managing director of L’Oréal Malaysia, is fitting right in. The Brit, who moved here last June, talks with much enthusiasm about his favourite Malaysian food — nasi lemak, bak kut teh and Sarawak laksa.

You could say that Stanleick is a Malaysian stuck in a white man’s body. He loves spicy food — “Literally, I can eat a bowl of cili padi and I enjoy it” — and would travel far and wide for good food — going to Klang for bak kut teh, and touring East Malaysia to sample the different types of laksa. An obsession with finding good local eats? That’s as Malaysian as you can get. 

This ability to share the love of a common food is a great connector of people, as Stanleick discovered. Particularly in Malaysia, where eating is a national pastime, nothing breaks down barriers between strangers more easily than a passion for food.

“Wherever I go, I do have a common denominator with which I can speak to any Malaysian, whatever their role, be it the CEO of a company or a stall representative in a small town — if you can talk about food, you can create a connection with someone. And I learn so much. People are worried about the big boss coming to the kampung to look at their stall, but if I start talking about laksa, people feel they can open up. I get the most interesting insights because people feel they can be honest with me,” says Stanleick.

It is obvious that Stanleick is a people-person. He wasn’t feeling his best on the day of this interview, but there is an affable ease about him and a refreshing openness to his personality. Charming and polite, he projects the image of an impeccable, polished English gentleman. But he is hardly the stereotypical staid Englishman — he has a rugged manly appeal, matched with an ever-present boyish grin, and a definite sense of playfulness behind his dark eyes.

Stanleick took the helm at L’Oréal Malaysia last June, replacing Jean-François Couve, who is now general manager of L’Oréal’s Asean consumer products division in Bangkok. The Cambridge grad brings with him 10 years of experience with the L’Oréal Group, having worked in different markets (UK, Russia and Poland) and divisions (mass market, consumer products and the L’Oréal Paris flagship brand).

Many industries took a severe beating with last year’s difficult economic conditions, but not so much the health and beauty industry, says Stanleick. “Whilst no industry, and certainly no market, is recession-proof, it’s true to say that the health and beauty market has proven to be resilient. For example, in Malaysia last year the market grew by a healthy 8%, which is really fantastic. After years of double-digit growth, it slowed down in 2009, and we’re really predicting 2010 to be a bounce-back year.”

Conspicuous consumption went out of fashion last year, and consumers cut back on big-ticket items like cars, houses and luxury goods. They found solace instead, in little feel-good, pick-me-up items like lipsticks, creams and fragrances. Stanleick says that the high-end brands (Giorgio Armani, Shu Uemura, Kiehls, Lancôme, to name but a few) in the L’Oréal portfolio did very well, as did the mass-market brands. “People who had the money to buy into those brands could continue to buy into those brands and probably made cutbacks elsewhere,” he says. “And the mass-market brands, like Garnier, Maybelline and L’Oréal Paris, really accelerated. The brands that had a more difficult year were the mid-market brands, the salon division.”

Stanleick says this phenomenon has cropped up time and time again in the past. “When we look back on our history, even during World War 2, the sale of lipsticks and those sorts of treats actually picked up. Women wanted to put a brave face to the world, even though times were tough. And last year there was so much miserable news about the economy, but people still wanted to make themselves feel good.”

What’s interesting to note in this part of the world is that it wasn’t just women who were purchasing these feel-good products — men were as well, buying into such brands as L’Oréal Men Expert, Biotherm and Garnier Men (which was recently launched in Malaysia).

“It’s really interesting when we compare Asia with the rest of the world. Asian men are adopting a skincare regimen earlier and using more products,” Stanleick says. “It increased during the recession, and we think it’s got something to do with job insecurity in these one or two years. I think there’s been additional pressure on men to do the business, and look sharp, like they’re really on the ball. We absolutely believe there’s a correlation between job security and men taking more care of themselves in an economic downturn.”

Several other factors helped buoy the company last year, like being first to bring to the market breakthrough innovations (for instance, products that worked on the gene level like Lancôme Génifique), not cutting back on advertising and promotions as so many other companies did, and tweaking its business strategy.

Stanleick explains, “Innovation was one area. The second was taking the very brave decision to continue to invest hard behind our brands. The third element is that we remained true to our business model, but we did tweak it. We launched things like fighting brands. A good example is Garnier Aqua Defense, a range of products that is under the Garnier brand but 25% cheaper. We could enable consumers who had less money to still buy into the high quality L’Oréal product experience. Normally our business model is built on adding value always to the market, launching high prices — it’s a virtual spiral. It was the first time we launched accessibly priced products. Consumers responded really well to that.”

This year, the outlook is favourable. “Fingers crossed, we’re very positive and optimistic about this year,” says Stanleick. “I’m pleased to say that January has started very positively.”

He shares his vision for the company. “We estimate we have a 13% share of the Malaysian health and beauty market, which makes us No 2 behind one of our big international competitors. And of course, our vision is to be No 1 in the market. We’re No 1 globally, we should be No 1 in Malaysia. Secondly, we want to have at least a 20% share. In big markets like the UK, US, France and Germany, we deserve and have a 20% to 25% share of the market.

"Wherever I go, I do have a common denominator with which I can speak to any Malaysian, whatever their role, be it the CEO of a company or a stall respresentative in a small town - if you can talk about food, you can create a connection with someone. And I learn so much. People are worried about the big boss coming to the kampung to look at their stall, but if I start talking about laksa, people feel they can open up. I get the most interesting insights because people feel they can be honest with me. - Stanleick"

“Here with 13% share, we have a lot of room to grow. When we look at our vision for the business over the next few years, and our mission, it’s good to know that we have 25 international brands in the group, and we have only 15 currently in Malaysia. So there’s great opportunity to grow organically.”

Setting the direction and drawing up strategies for growth for the company is but one aspect of Stanleick’s job. The other is nurturing the people, “the heart of everything we do” in the company. He says, “What we’re trying to do globally as well as in Malaysia is to make L’Oréal a great place to work. Particularly in Malaysia, there’s a real war for talent. The market is extremely competitive. We want to retain and keep the very best people.” Stanleick works very closely with the human resource department to ensure this.

When asked to describe his leadership style, Stanleick is momentarily stumped. “I’ve never been asked that before,” he laughs, then says, “Iron fist in a velvet glove. I’m open and collaborative… L’Oréal has a discursive culture, it’s about debating and challenging. Employees, even in Asia, really feel they have the right to stand up and give their opinion about the brand. We have this interesting element about L’Oréal where we take an idea, break it down and then build it up better. That can be quite challenging for young marketers in front of their boss, to have their ideas and concepts challenged, but we truly feel that through shared debate and discourse, and not one person making all the decisions, we can come up with better ideas.”

Stanleick does not believe in working past 7pm — this work-life balance is a crucial element he brings to the company, something that many of us in this part of the world desperately need. His “meetings charter” states that no formal meetings should start before 10am or after 6pm. “We do everything we can to prevent people from working long hours,” he says.

Another thing that Stanleick believes strongly in is corporate social responsibility (CSR), an area that the L’Oréal Group invests in at every market. “It’s something L’Oréal feels strongly about, having a sense of ethics, wanting to be a good citizen. It’s important to companies these days, but it is something that L’Oréal has been involved in for a long time.”

In Malaysia, L’Oréal has four CSR initiatives. The For Women in Science campaign (a global project done with Unesco) awards funding to women scientists in their own area of research. The Keep in School Scheme launched last year for L’Oréal’s centenary celebration collaborates with the Malaysian AIDS Foundation to support 100 HIV positive children around the age of 12 in continuing their secondary education. Another AIDS-related initiative is Hairdressers of the World Against AIDS. Using the L’Oréal Professional hairdressers network, training sessions on AIDS awareness and prevention are conducted. The Look Good Feel Better project involves beauty workshops for cancer patients, in partnership with the Malaysian National Cancer Society.

This year marks Stanleick’s 10th year with the L’Oréal Group. I ask him what he loves about the company. “I love the brands, and I’ve been very lucky to have worked on many of those brands. It’s the diversity of the experience. We’re a very fast moving company. I used to work for Unilever, which was a lot more traditional. The pace of L’Oréal and the diversity of its brands is really exciting.

“I also think it’s the profile of the people who work at L’Oréal. We have this expression to describe L’Oréal people: L’Oréalians. Two distinct characteristics that L’Oréal people have is this concept of being a poet on the one hand, having the creativity, the flair for innovation, and on the other is the concept of being a peasant… very mindful of the bottom line, profit and loss, numbers driven, analytical.

“The other great thing about L’Oréal, if you want life to be an adventure like I do and you want to travel, we really can make that happen. We work in 130 countries… our business is growing globally. We have opportunities everywhere.”

Malaysia is Stanleick’s first Asian posting, but he is no stranger to this country or this region, having vacationed here numerous times before. “I’ve been very lucky in life to travel and live in many countries. My attitude is ‘wherever you live, it’s your home’. I really do consider myself — and it’s not a cliché — a citizen of the world. Malaysia, for my family and myself, is now home. We’re all very happy to be here. My partner is very happy to be here as well, which is key.

“I find Kuala Lumpur a very dynamic city. But what’s really interesting about KL is you have all the modern buildings and skyscrapers, but you can still find pockets that really remind you you’re in Malaysia — the hawker food, and the greenery as well. It’s very nice.”

Travelling is one of his passions, as is sport — tennis in particular, which he plays two or three times a week. An avid reader, he says he’s reading “a wonderful book” called The Passport by Herta Müller, last year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. A surprising confession from this managing director is that he reads “all different types of books, but rarely business books”. Music is another passion.

About his job, he says, “I honestly enjoy coming to work every day.” And it shows.

This article appeared in Options, the lifestyle pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 792, Feb 8-14, 2010