Step by step, with strategic focus on specific categories and segments, the ACTIUM group has grown into one of the largest beauty distributors in the Americas. From its beginnings as a beverage agent in 2004, then its move into luxury retail, its entry into beauty, and finally the expansion of the L’Oréal portfolio in the Caribbean, over the past 20 plus years ACTIUM founder Philippe Giraud has scaled up the company into a $100 million business focusing on luxury retail and beauty distribution.
“ACTIUM is a fast-growing company. But people are very often surprised when they find out the size of our company. We are basically at $100 million of turnover,” Giraud tells TMI in an exclusive interview.
“We connect iconic global brands with affluent consumers, and we do it mostly in the Caribbean and Latin America through unique distribution, retail and brand building capabilities.”
Today ACTIUM is a beauty distributor of leading luxury beauty brands across the Caribbean (L’Oreal Group) and on-board cruise ships worldwide for PUIG, Hermès Parfums, and Sisley. In luxury retail, the company operates iconic luxury boutiques in Latin America and the Caribbean for Hermès, Cartier, Gucci, and Valentino.
Despite this impressive roster, Giraud says that he would consider certain additions.
“We are open to welcome other significant partners that make sense to our strategy and complement our existing partners,” he tells TMI.
ACTIUM’s third division provides high-impact training, visual merchandising, and retail execution services on board cruise ships for prestige beauty brands like CHANEL Beauty, PUIG, Sisley, and Hermès Parfums.
ACTIUM’s steady growth into the silent beauty giant it has become in 2026 is built on the back of three strategic pillars, says Giraud.
1) Focus, with a relentless prioritization of beauty as a core growth engine, with disciplined portfolio and market selection.
2) Excellence: best-in-class execution across people, sales, marketing, logistics, digital infrastructure and financial discipline.
3) Spirit of Conquest: entrepreneurial drive to unlock under-developed markets, accelerate brand momentum, and outperform benchmarks.
“We have a relentless focus. All the distributors tell you they are focused. In the case of ACTIUM, we are focused on very few partners and we are focused on worldwide leaders,” says Giraud.
“In Beauty, L’Oreal is the number one beauty company in the world. We are the distributor of L’Oreal in the Caribbean.
“In retail, Hermès is the number one, the biggest individual luxury house in the world. Cartier is the number one jewelry and watch company in the world, Gucci is in the top five and Valentino is an iconic name.”
ACTIUM is a true luxury specialist, says Giraud, which gives the company another competitive advantage.
“We operate six boutiques in partnership with Chalhoub Group: Hermès in Panama and Chile, Cartier in Saint Barth, Gucci in Panama and Chile, and Valentino in Saint Barth. We do work in beauty with L’Oréal, which has a big Luxe division. We represent Hermès Parfums and Sisley. We provide training and merchandising services to CHANEL. So we work with the true, iconic luxury brands in the world.”
From spirits to beauty
While today ACTIUM is a leading beauty and luxury distributor, in the beginning the group was built on wines and spirits, says Giraud.
“I came from ex Remy, ex William Grant & Sons until 2004 when I started the company. What did I know at that time? I knew spirits. I knew Latin America,” he says.
“We started as a broker for wines and spirits brands in the Caribbean. We said very early, our goal is to transition from broker to distributor, from distributor to retailer, from retailer to brand owner, and in multi categories, to expand the potential of what we do.”
In 2008, ACTIUM made its first move into retail with Hermès.
“We were lucky to strike our first deal in retail through the big door, Hermès. We opened the concession of Hermès in Panama in 2008. A few months later, we approached Hermès and made a proposal to buy their subsidiary in Chile. So that put our foot in retail.”
From 2013 to 2018, ACTIUM expanded in retail, signing partnerships with Gucci, Cartier, Valentino.
In 2019, ACTIUM’s beauty business began to scale up. L’Oréal went from three distributors in the Caribbean to consolidating under one with ACTIUM. The company is now the exclusive distributor of L’Oréal TRAM in the Caribbean region and selected Central American & South American travel retail customers. It is also the exclusive distributor of L’Oréal USA Luxe Division in the Caribbean domestic markets of Jamaica, Bermuda, Barbados, St. Kitts, and Guyana. This business unit operates with a fully dedicated commercial, marketing, and operational team.
ACTIUM maintained its Beverage division, until selling it at the end of 2025. However, ACTIUM owns its own award-winning French luxury whisky, Alfred GIRAUD, sales of which are growing around the world. Nevertheless, beauty is ACTIUM’s fastest-growing division and a top strategic priority, says Giraud.
“We are significantly ahead of our business this year in both retail and beauty, growing strongly in both cases,” he says.
But Giraud is not satisfied, and has been determined to improve how ACTIUM does business in every way.
“We did a thorough audit in 2025 of our strengths, weaknesses, risks, and opportunities. We tried to take a very honest hard look at where we were underperforming.
Based on the audit, ACTIUM came up with an EXCELLENCE plan with the objective to become, the Best-in-Class beauty distributor across Latin America and the Caribbean. The plan is structured around three strategic pillars: excellence in execution, spirit of conquest, and people/ talent development; and eight core competencies: Sales, Trade Marketing & Retail Activation, Brand & Corporate Marketing, Logistics & Warehousing, Finance & Administration, IT & Digital Infrastructure, Customer Experience, and Leadership & Company Culture.
“For each competency, we identified three to five priorities with one-year KPIs and three-year KPIs and very clear goals on what and where and how we want to improve. We measure ourselves quarterly in the most objective manner, asking our partners for a 360 evaluation of how we perform. And this has yielded concrete results,” says Giraud.
“We’ve raised the bar in terms of recruitment, training, and compensation structures. We have invested as a group, $700,000 in switching our operations to SAP and Power BI. We have created what we call an ACTIUM University every Friday afternoon, organizing trainings for everybody in the company.”
Giraud’s goal is to level up the company with these changes.
“We’ve gone from a $40 million company to a $100 million in the last five years. We have more than doubled the business since the pandemic. It’s a different animal.”
ACTIUM has improved logistics supply chain optimization with its external warehouse, cutting down its delivery time significantly.
“We have been completely revamping our logistics operations. In the last six months we have basically cut our average time of delivery by 35%. Our goal being to cut it in half by the end of 2026 so that’s the EXCELLENCE plan.”
And these improvements are helping ACTIUM to take the company to the next level.
“Given our current pipeline, we anticipate our sales to rise to around $120 million within the following two years,” says Giraud.
