 |
|
 | |
|
Home | Reading Room | Products | Forum | Contact Showcase | Best SE's | Tools | Classified Ads |
|
|
| |
| |
| |
|
|
Lost Password?
Click Here |
|
Lessons In Perfume
|
 An advertising poster for Coty's L'Origan |
Coty, more than anyone else, established the four pillars of the modern perfume business. Today it is difficult to understand how much has changed since the first decade of the 20th Century. Specifically, Coty taught us
Alchemy. When you make perfume by the gallon and sell it by the ounce, the sale of the first few ounces pays off the cost of the entire gallon. And there are 128 fluid ounces to the gallon.
Packaging. When perfume is sold in a nice bottle, the added value, in the eyes of the consumer, can be many times the added cost of the packaging.
Promotion. Sales for a perfume can be multiplied dramatically through clever, appropriate, energetic, promotional efforts.
Mass Marketing. When a perfume has established itself in the luxury market, profits can be greatly expanded by repackaging it for the masses.
This is the modern perfume business. End of story.
The Details
Alchemy
"Cheap" doesn't necessarily mean lacking in quality. While perfume makers boast to clients that they use the world's most expensive raw materials, the fact is they use restraint in the quantities of expensive materials that go into a formula because, quite simply, they want to make money.
Orphaned in his youth, Coty was forced to drop out of school for lack of money. Coming of age, he obtained a post as secretary to an influential Frenchman and set off for Paris where his grandmother hoped he would be introduced to the "right" sort of people. Coty, a Corsican born Joseph Marie François Spoturno, took the name "Coty" as it was shorter, easier to remember and, no doubt, more socially acceptable in the environment where he hoped to make his mark.
Quick! What was Ralph Lauren's name before he became "Ralph Lauren"?
While Coty probably met a number of the "right" people, the man who left the most indelible mark on his life was not a member of the upper classes but rather a chemist who operated a perfume business as a sideline. Coty did the math and was hooked.
The next step was the research. How was it done? Coty immersed himself in the study of fragrance making, spent a year in Grasse, the home and heart of the French perfume industry, and emerged with enough knowledge to make his own perfume. Returning to Paris, the fun began.
Today a year of study would hardly quality an apprentice to start making perfume successfully, even if he or she was exceptionally talented. It he were starting out today, Coty would probably be forced to join forces with a talented perfumer and concentrate his own efforts on making sales. Yet the fact is that Coty, on his own, made good — or even great — perfume.
Packaging
Today it is hard to imagine a world in which a customer went to one shop to buy perfume — in a plain glass bottle — and then to another to buy a fancy bottle for it.
Today an organization that hopes to sell a new perfume will be lining up a package designer even before the formula for the "juice" has been finalized.
Pierre Dinand, over a 40 year period, has been involved with package design for over 500 perfumes. Clients have included Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, Calvin Klein, Paco Rabanne, Loris Azzaro, Diana de Silva, Rochas, Parfums Stern, Floorbath Profumi, Parfums Alfred Sung, S.I.R.P.E.A., Balmain, Giorgio Armani, Krizia, Cassini ... the list goes on and on. Any why? Because of the lessons François Coty taught us.
Today is it universally recognized that for all the cost that goes into developing a package for a new perfume, sales figures have proven, over and over, that this is an essential investment. François Coty is generally credited with being the first perfumer to recognize the enormous value of packaging.
As early as 1908, Coty formed an alliance with Rene Lalique, a rising design superstar. Their first collaboration led to a fragrance called L'Effleurt. Some say that it was through Coty's influence that Lalique turned away from jewelry and began to work more in glass.
Regardless of the exact details of this collaboration, the amazing innovation was simply this: perfume was being sold in a "designer" bottle!
Promotion
Before Coty, perfume promotion, if you could even call it that, was distinctly low key. Dignified. But definitely not dynamic.
A "good" promotion was for a perfume maker to boast that he was the "official" supplier to Lord or Lady Big. That information was conveyed on the label of the plain, pre-Coty bottle.
Coty took a more active role in promoting his product. Rather than letting it gather dust on the shelves of his shop on the Rue de la Boetie (at that time not considered a very distinguished address), Coty marched off to the department stores seeking shelf space where his perfumes would get better exposure — and sales.
The story is told, in various versions, of how the buyer at a major Parisian department store, Grands Magasins du Louvre, refused to take Coty's new perfume. On leaving the store, Coty let drop a bottle of his fragrance, La Rose Jacqueminot. Striking the hard floor, the Lalique crystal exploded like a bomb, filling the crowded store with the scent of ... La Rose Jacqueminot.
And now the game gets really good.
As the scent of La Rose Jacqueminot filled the air — and the store — a number of frenzied women (hired by Coty?) rushed around the store asking where they could buy this marvelous fragrance. The buyer for the Grands Magasins du Louvre called Coty back A deal was made. And within days, 500 bottles of La Rose Jacqueminot were sold.
Other stores got the message and hurried to obtain Coty's perfume. Coty got more and more shelf space. By 1914 Coty was a wealthy man and his company, now relocated to a fashionable neighborhood, was the world's number one seller of perfume.
Mass Marketing
Controversies in his later life have probably caused industry biographers to largely ignore Coty's fourth major contribution to modern perfume marketing — mass marketing.
Coty was already rich and dominant in his industry by August of 1914 when World War I broke out in Europe. The war curbed sales until the arrival of the Americans and (in 1918) the end of hostilities. At this point, Coty once again found a device to goose the sales curve upward. This was his fourth great innovation.
American soldiers needed small gifts to bring home to wives, girlfriends and mothers. Coty began repackaging his perfumes for this new market. By offering his perfume in smaller bottles, he could make them affordable to large numbers of American soldiers. And, as they brought Coty's perfume back to America, they helped open up a market larger than Europe.
By 1920 Coty is said to have amassed a fortune in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He is believed, at that time, to have been one of the richest men in the world.
|
"Help Me Sell My Own Perfume!" Marketing Ideas for Independent Perfume Makers |
|
Our Perfume Marketing Blog |
