This is the best lesson to success

What do you do when you have created a perfume that you have an unusually high confidence in, but a department store refuses to sell it? Then you “drop” a bottle of your scent at the perfume counter and wait a day. If your perfume is really that good, all the customers will ask where they can buy that perfume. And then it’s just a matter of waiting until the department store, with shame on their cheeks, knocks on your door. The scent in question was Coty’s La Rose Jacqueminot. The department store: Les Magasins du Louvre.

The rest is history

A long and beautiful story, because the perfume pioneers of Coty celebrate that they have been coloring and scenting our lives for 120 years. Coty did more than just a brilliant marketing trick to sell their goods. The bottle had to look as good as it smelled. So ‘the coat’ of ‘the juice’, as the French call the perfume's liquid, had to become an object. Something to show off on your vanity. A piece of jewelry. The bottle (woe to you if you say ‘bottle’ in the beauty world) of Ambre Antique originated from a collaboration with Lalique and was even exhibited at an exhibition in Brussels in 1910.

Synthetic molecules

Coty wanted to do more with perfumes than just ‘imitate’ nature. By adding chemical molecules to the natural scent molecules, they had a much broader palette of possibilities and could create many more perfumes.

A scent as an icon

The hobby horse I often ride is that it is so important to have a signature if you want something to be successful. A signature can be anything; even the bun of the kindergarten teacher. That stands for a touch of traditional, punctual, and reliable (because always the same). The scent family of Coty consists of all scent icons where not only is there a lot of thought about the scent (how do you experience it when you apply it, how long does it stay with you, and what sensation does a passerby experience when they smell you, all of this is researched in laboratories), but also: what story does a perfume tell? Calvin Klein was ahead of his time with CK One. An androgynous scent; his and hers, clean, fresh. Marc Jacobs stands for cheerfulness, lightness, playfulness, and Chloé stands for an entrepreneurial, adventurous, life-embracing woman who is close to nature, while Boss focuses much more on people operating in the business field. Fresh, sharp, layered, a touch mysterious. Both the scents, the bottles, and the campaigns and all offspring of the scent families all fit under the umbrella with the DNA of the scent. They do this particularly well at Coty.

That smells like more

Of course, 120 years of success had to be celebrated, and yes, you do that with your own perfume. But one would be too little, so it became a complete collection; Infiniment with 14 unique scents (that last for thirty hours) in beautiful bottles. The symbol? The infinity sign. Why? Because with a perfume you hope to make a connection. With yourself, with the people around you. A connection that is infinite and continues to flow, just like the empire of Coty.

By the way, how did it end with La Rose Jacqueminot? It became a bestseller and is still sold 120 years later. Speaking of a long and happy life.