Borghese is ready to make a comeback.
The 67-year-old Italian skin care brand, best known for its mud mask Fango, named Dawn Hilarczyk, formerly of Noble Panacea, chief operating officer in March, and she is on a mission to reignite the company by tapping into its Italian history, core pillars and omnichannel retail.
Dawn Hilarczyk
Courtesy
“The brand is back,” Hilarczyk said. “We call it the renaissance… The brand is now strategically focused on re-establishing our brand pillars.”
While she is bullish on the brand’s future, Hilarczyk isn’t shy about discussing its softer years.
“The brand has been quite quiet over the last several years,” she said, pointing to a loss of brand DNA, lack of strong digital presence and lack of diversity in retail.
To start this “renaissance,” the team is doubling down on Borghese’s history, emphasizing the story of its founder Princess Marcella Borghese and its Italian roots. Specifically, the brand will focus on its “at-home spa” messaging, initially created by Borghese, via product sets and campaigns.
“She would go [to Tuscan spa retreats] and get these nourishing treatments and say, ‘Well, if I can have them, why can’t every woman have them?’ That was her pro-aging and women empowerment,” said Hilarczyk. “She took what she learned at these Tuscan spa retreats, and she created a brand.”
In highlighting the brand’s “at-home spa” offering, the “Italian recipe,” a streamlined skin care routine, will be front and center across messaging. The lineup includes Crema Saponetta Creme Cleanser, $41; Curaforte Moisture Intensifier, $75; Crema Ristorativo-24 Moisturizer, $80; Power-C Firming & Brightening Serum Capsules, $80, and of course, the brand’s bestselling Advanced Fango Active Mud Mask, $53. The brand recently released a miniature set of these products, which outperformed expectations, according to Hilarczyk, and will continue to refer to it across campaigns.
With this, the Advanced Fango Active Mud Mask is a crucial stock keeping unit, as it has been the flagship of the brand, said Hilarczyk. According to the team, 20 million Fango masks have been sold to date and the brand continues to sell one a minute. In 2025, the company will celebrate the product’s 40th anniversary with a “Do You Fango?” campaign across platforms. The brand is also relying on that product’s success as inspiration for its latest one.
“[It] led us to the newest innovation, which we just launched in Q2, which is an overnight resurfacing mask with AHA and BHA,” Hilarczyk said.
Homing in on its bestselling skin care products also led the team to cut its color cosmetics offering. It now has 27 skin care-focused skus.
Aside from doubling down on the brand’s long history and its cult favorite products, Hilarczyk is focused on diversifying Borghese’s retail strategy, which she points to as a factor of its slowdown in recent years.
“They weren’t diversifying retail, and they weren’t going in [on] digital,” she said of the previous strategy. “When you don’t have those two, what happens? You become almost obsolete.”
With this in mind, she said many consumers have a level of nostalgia for the brand, often leaving comments across platforms saying they remember their mom using the product or recall purchasing Borghese at a certain retailer and no longer being able to find it in stores. Hilarczyk’s goal is to turn this nostalgic customer into an active one with a focus on an omnichannel strategy and its latest retail launch with Neiman Marcus.
“Our customers want to go to many different places, so we need to be where they want to shop,” she said, emphasizing digital is crucial but not all-important. “When you look at Neiman’s and you think about customer service, at-home experiential and quality, they’re perfectly aligned with us.”
The brand will roll out in another three retailers by January, Hilarczyk said.
“What you’ll see in 2025 is, we will continue to focus on North America, obviously digital [and] Amazon and diversifying our retail landscape,” she continued, adding that China and South Africa are key markets.
Aside from this, the team is expanding the brand’s presence with spa partners. According to industry sources, the brand, which was previously a $100 million company, was expected to reach around $50 million in sales this year and is estimated to grow by 109 percent in 2025.
