Best face forward: Brazil's homegrown cosmetics companies are building global brands, step by step.

Natura, Brazil's biggest cosmetics company, began as a door-to-door sales outfit. It has had direct-sales subsidiaries for more than a decade in Peru, Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. In late April, however, Natura opened its first store, not in Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo, but in a chic, two-story boutique in the Saint Germain neighborhood of Paris.

The US$20 million investment will be a test bed for European markets during the next three years. "Natura decided to open our first store in France because it's the world's No. 1 cosmetic-consuming country and because retail--rather than door-to-door sales--is how the French buy cosmetics," says Natura Vice President Alessandro Carlucci.

Indeed, Brazil's top cosmetics makers have in the last few years taken their search for market share to many other continents. They have to: Tough foreign competitors--both in up-market products like fancy perfumes and more pedestrian offerings like shampoo--have forced them to find new markets abroad in places as varied as France, Mexico, Portugal, even Mozambique and Saudia Arabia.

Natura will start off selling only its 80-unit Ekos line of bath, body, hair and fragrances in the Paris store, adding other lines later. The company's green reputation already has won over many Brazilians. "I buy Natura's Ekos-line cremes for the same reason I buy Body Shop products when abroad, because they're high quality and made with sustainably harvested natural ingredients I'm familiar with, like oils from Brazil or cashew nuts," said Rosa Araujo, a retired Rio schoolteacher.

Natura is spending another $20 million by 2007 to expand its direct sales operations into Mexico. The company expects by 2007 to begin direct sales in Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Uruguay and Costa Rica, too. Natura's foreign sales accounted for 2.8% of gross revenues of $870 million in 2004. "In the next 10 years, we plan to grow considerably abroad so that Natura is seen as a multinational company," says Carlucci. "Opening our first store in Paris is a major step in that direction."

O Boticario, Brazil's No. 2 cosmetics company, began its intercontinental expansion in 1986 in Portugal, where it now has 49 stores, as well as in Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. In addition, the company recently conquered two new continents. Beginning in 2003, it opened its first department store kiosks in Mozambique, plus 30 of them in Saudi Arabia and 20 more in the United Arab Emirates. O Boticario also has 438 such sales points in Japan.

In 2003, O Boticario open its first department store counters in the United States, as well as in airports, and it now has 171 sales points there. But its most ambitious recent expansion has been in Mexico, a push which began in 2002. It now has seven stores and 26 department store presences in Mexico City and plans to continue expanding there. O Boticario's main product is perfume, its biggest seller in the company's 2,317 Brazilian stores. That product is catching on in its new Middle Eastern markets.

Mexico became the company's biggest expansion market, says O Boticario Vice President Artur Grynbaum, because it's the biggest Latin American economy, and it's not depressed like Argentina. "Mexico is also the door to the U.S. economy. Because there are lots of U.S. companies in Mexico and lots of Mexicans living in the United States who visit their families across the border, our being in Mexico City builds our brand name," he says. "So, if one day we decided to open stores in Texas, we'd already have name recognition there."

Going global. Foreign sales now account for 2% of O Boticario's gross revenues of $650 million in 2004, although it is expected to account for up to 10% by 2010. "Although the Brazilian market still has lots of room for growth, we want to be a global brand and to do that we have to show our face abroad," Grynbaum says.

Agua de Cheiro, Brazil's No. 3 cosmetics firm, used to sell its products in Costa Rica and Colombia but now restricts its foreign outposts to the Middle East, where its perfumes and colognes are popular. It began selling to stores in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 2002, and in 2004 also began selling in Oman, Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Being in the Middle East has helped, says Agua de Cheiro spokeswoman Luciana Rezende. "Exports for 2005 are expected to account for 5% of total sales," she says.