In the fashion industry, where the market environment and consumption trends are constantly changing, thinking of danger in times of peace and taking precautions is not alarmist, but a necessary consciousness to maintain long-term survival.
This is especially true for brands that focus only on specific categories such as fragrance collections.
Therefore, in the past period of time, more and more fragrance brands are no longer just sitting on the market dividends that come with the smell economy, but are constantly trying to win greater profits and living space through more long-term business strategies such as horizontal product line expansion and vertical extension of brand culture.
A few days ago, Diptyque, a niche high-end fragrance brand from France, released a new artist's home collection that includes everyday items such as plates, coasters, trays, Murano glass flower holders and candlesticks, which uses soft colors such as ketone green and mint blue, using geometric ovals and domino patterns as natural elements, maintaining practicality and ornamentation.
Diptyque unveils a new Artist Residence collection
This isn't Diptyque's first artist-dwelling collection. To celebrate the brand's 60th anniversary, Diptyque launched its first decoration collection of fragrances, home décor and tablewares last year, and from September 11 to October 7, the "Journey Without Boundaries" art exhibition was held at Fosun Art Center in Shanghai, reflecting on the brand's 60 years of artistic creation.
Diptyque Home Furnishing Collection
The three founders of the brand, Desmond Knox-Leet, Christiane Gautrot and Yves Coueslant, have come from the art and decorative design world and have already showcased and sold their own interior home accessories when they first joined forces to open a boutique on the Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris. Therefore, with the fragrance series as the core product line, and then with a coherent scene awareness, combined with the brand's long-standing advantages, extending to the more long-term track of the home series, there are certain natural advantages and objective feasibility for Diptyque.
Such horizontal vertical expansion trends in the fragrance market also include Many brands such as Byredo and Guanxia, which also initially focused on the fragrance series as the core product line.
Since launching its beauty collection in 2020, Byredo has been committed to creating an all-way lifestyle contemporary luxury brand, such as the Byproduct product line that jumped out of the fragrance beauty line, launching the jewelry collection Value Chain co-designed with Charlotte Chesnais and the Byredo leather goods collection Home Coming leather goods collection made by a family-owned workshop in Florence in the spring and summer of 2021.
Byredo Micro Blueprint bag
In an interview with WWD China, Ben Gorham, founder and creative director of the brand, once said: "Fragrance products are based on memory and emotion, but both of these things change with time and space. Our leather goods and Byproduct products reflect my dedication to perfection, craftsmanship and the use of high-quality ingredients. It's hard to see this pursuit directly in beauty and fragrance products, but you can intuitively feel it by touching Byproduct products. In addition, he said that Byredo's creative vision is to connect with people in a variety of different forms, and I have never set limits on this, And Byproduct is a true exploration of this belief.
In August last year, according to the Tianyancha APP, Guanxia To Summer registered a new company called "Shanghai Xianting Brand Management Co., Ltd.", which is 100% controlled by Guanxia's parent company, Beijing Guangyi Technology Co., Ltd. According to public information, the company's business scope covers brand management, cosmetics retail, clothing and apparel retail, etc.
In September last year, Guanxia To Summer also launched the brand magazine Kunlun Kunlun, which used this as a medium to engage in dialogue with oriental artists such as contemporary artist Cai Guoqiang, Tao Body Dance Troupe, Buddha statue sculptor Jiang Sheng, photographer Lin Shu and so on. It is worth noting that "Kunlun Kunlun" is an experimental cultural project of Guanxia, which is only given away and not sold, but in addition to the living room and small courtyard of Guanxia, Kunlun Kunlun will also appear in the Song Art Museum, Mumu Art Museum, Rosewood Hotel, Four Seasons Hotel and other physical spaces. Compared with the upgrading and expansion of the product line, kunlun can bring more to Guanxia To Summer, which is an extension of brand value and user scenarios.
To Summer Brand Magazine "Kunlun Kunlun"
In the face of the unabated growth of the fragrance market, especially the market increment that can be tapped in the Chinese market, why are more and more brands that have always taken the fragrance series as the core product line in the past no longer choose to win only with products and smells?
Or horizontally expand the product line matrix, or vertically extend the brand value, in the face of the business trends that have become a trend of these brands, can it also reflect the fragrance market that seems to be soaring in recent years, and there is also a certain crisis?
The fragrance market is not only unique to the "fragrance brand", this long-standing objective fact may be the primary motivation and necessity of the expansion ideas of many fragrance brands.
Luxury beauty product lines, which include fragrance product lines and have a strong brand endorsement, as well as new players who have continued to enter the game in recent years, are the diversion forces that the fragrance brand continues to face.
First of all, taking luxury beauty as an example, in addition to the advantages of brand endorsement, business strength and customer base of often a hundred years, from the product level alone, including skin care, makeup, fragrance series and other categories of parallel business model, it determines the stability of the brand. For them, the fragrance collection can be the core driving force for the growth of luxury beauty performance, but it will not absolutely shake the brand's "life and death". This is a significant difference between the fragrance brand and the relatively single product line.
And focusing on the fragrance series, many luxury beauty brands have also continued to launch a series of fierce offensives in the past two years. Just like in the past year, brands from Ralph Lauren and Dior to Celine, Tom Ford, Christian Louboutin and so on have invited many traffic artists to serve as perfume ambassadors or spokespersons to seize the opportunity in social media voice.
Christian Louboutin Perfume Ambassador Fan Cheng Cheng
Through the brand history, culture and aesthetic system that runs through the product lines of jewelry watches, leather goods, clothing and other categories, further emphasizing the luxury attributes of their respective fragrance series has also become the general trend of many luxury cosmetics.
In February, the Dior perfume documentary "Nose" was officially launched, and directors Arthur de Kersauson and Clément Beauvais followed Dior Perfume Chief Perfumer Fran ois Demachy to create inspiration for perfumes and the process of discovering precious ingredients. Inaugurated in August last year, the month-long Fragrances of Sensing Chanel also brings classic products to life in an innovative way by creating a synaesthesia world where sight, hearing and smell complement each other.
Dior Perfume Documentary Nose
Secondly, in the face of this visible Red Sea market, there has been no shortage of competition from countless new players in the past two years. According to the data of enterprise investigation, in the nine years from 2012 to 2020, the number of newly registered perfume enterprises in China was 62, 56 and 102 in 2012-2014, and 290, 319 and 277 in 2018-2020, with a total of 1528.
Among them, in 2020, there will be New Local fragrance brands such as Voice From The Sky, Beast Youth, Black Claw, Scentooze Three Rabbits and so on. In 2019-2021, L'Oréal introduced the fragrance collections of Maison Margiela, Viktor & Rolf and Mugler in China, and Estée Lauder, Shiseido and Puig also introduced a number of fragrance brands.
Therefore, although the market significance of the odor economy is discussed, or the development prospects of china's fragrance market in the growth period have always been optimistic, for those fragrance brands with perfumes, indoor fragrances and other products as the core series, in the long run, the desirable market space may not be abundant. But because of this, with the exploration of the fragrance brand based on longer-term survival and profitability, there must be more possibilities in the future market.
In addition to the product line expansion strategies discussed above, such as Diptyque's "Journey Without Boundaries" art exhibition, or To Summer's Echo guanxia "Kunlun Kunlun" exhibition held by Guanxia To Summer at the launch of its first brand magazine "Kunlun Kunlun", it can be seen as an extension of the brand value cycle and even collection value through more cohesive community building activities and the creation of cultural and artistic cores for products and brands.
Diptyque "Journey without Borders" art exhibition
The same motivation and strategy can also be reflected in the same retail site selection and format services.
Previously, the most frequently mentioned are documents wenxian settled in Shanghai's hipster circle of TX Huaihai business circle, from the inside to the outside with black tones mainly stylized stores, or Guanxia To Summer's "Guanxia Leisure Garden". The two have also been focused on describing them as "spaces" rather than "stores" in official information.
To Summer opens a summer viewing garden in Xuhui District, Shanghai
After opening the first national brand store in Taikoo Li, Sanlitun, Beijing in 2020, To Summer opened a second offline store in Xuhui District, Shanghai in January this year, adhering to the concept of repairing the old as the old, after more than 200 days of renovation and transformation, Guanxia Leisure Garden retained the original architectural Spanish style of old bungalows, and also took into account the brand's oriental neomodalism, creating a comfortable and pleasant experience space. It is reported that the second floor of the Guanxia Leisure Garden has been created into an Oriental lifestyle space. Before the official opening, a five-day "idle bureau" activity was held, including the TangGuozi Production Bureau and the Handmade Book Binding Bureau, which were closely related to traditional Chinese culture.
According to WWD China's field observations and discussions on many social platforms, It is currently under construction that To Summer's store in Beijing's Guozijian Neighborhood, which has a very cultural and historical atmosphere, is also under construction.
In addition, in addition to the brand positioning and stylistic distinctions, as well as the division of solid fragrances, liquid fragrances, body fragrances, or indoor fragrances, etc., and the division of specific use methods, more conceptual and more comprehensive lifestyle scenario-based category prefixes are also creating a larger brand supply side and use demand.
This can be seen both in the fact that Jo Malone has launched the world's first Jo Malone London "Fragrance Villa" at the Jianyeli Capella Hotel, the only all-villa hotel in Shanghai, and can also be verified by the fragrance brand launched by Aman Hotel.
Jo Malone London "Villa Fragrance"
With the theme of "Just Because No Fragrance, No Life", Jo Malone launched 4 unique fragrance-themed rooms, namely Just Because, Blue BlueBell, Sage and Sea Salt, Lime Basil and Citrus. Each Jo Malone London fragrance villa consists of a separate living room, audio-visual room, bathroom, bedroom, top floor terrace and small courtyard. Every room is specially tailored from bed linen throw pillows to fragrances, candles, baths, bodies, home products and even bathrobes.
It can be seen from the summary of the examples listed that whether it is the expansion idea at the product line level or the brand value extension at the cultural level, although the fragrance brand faces challenges in different dimensions, there is still more room for play. Moreover, for China's fragrance market, which is still in its growth stage, with the transformation of consumer trends and market environment, those fragrance brands with fragrance as the core product line still have a long way to go in the future and will usher in a more protracted business battle.
Overall, the perfume consumption market in China and the world will maintain a stable growth trend. In the market environment where uncertainty still exists, the high profitability and risk resistance of perfume products will also spawn more new brands and new perfumes. At the same time, the trend changes in the market can also be enlightened for other brands that take specific categories as the star product line and are greatly affected by the external environment and consumer psychology, and it is never too early to tap their own potential according to their respective brand characteristics and think about the profitability and viability of a longer cycle in peace. WWD
Written by yalta
Image source brand official and online