Revlon India’s Turnaround: Navigating Online-Offline Decisions Using a Balanced Scorecard

Revlon India was founded as a joint venture in 1995, pairing the industrial conglomerate UMG with the global beauty brand Revlon, Inc. to bring international color cosmetics to India. After growing rapidly and pioneering the Beauty Advisor (BA) model in India, the company began to struggle in the 2010s as it faced challenges in its sales and supply chain operations and started to lose touch with the market, all while competition rose, with new companies leveraging e-commerce platforms and international brands entering the market. In November 2023, Meghna Modi was tapped to turnaround the struggling venture. In the 5 months since her appointment, Modi had made enormous strides. She reorganized the head office, broke down silos in the sales organization, and reengaged with Revlon India’s BAs. She completely revamped the company’s e-commerce team, and began to collect data to understand its supply chain deficiencies. Modi also aimed to foster more accountability and learning in the company. Towards this end, she developed a Strategy Map and Balanced Scorecard (BSC) to articulate and evaluate Revlon India’s business model. However, this unearthed a significant tradeoff between the company’s online and offline operations. With pressure to breakeven by the end of 2024, Modi had to decide how to manage this tradeoff. Should the company emphasize either online or offline? Should it integrate them, or differentiate them? And how could the BSC be used to test potential solutions?