PARIS — Givaudan said it has launched the primary artificial intelligence-powered fragrance co-creation service with Tmall, Alibaba’s business-to-business consumer platform, in China.

The businesses revealed in early June 2021 that they’d partnered on what was dubbed T-Lab, meant to shorten end-to-end fragrance development to 4 weeks, compared with the normal 40 weeks, consistent with the fast-paced digital opportunities in China.

In China, where fragrance remained unpopular for a few years after the Cultural Revolution within the ’60s, there was a big resurgence of interest in perfume.

In accordance with Statista, fragrance sales in China are expected to achieve $1.27 billion this yr, and between 2022 and 2026, the category’s compound annual growth rate is forecast to be 7.27 percent.

Givaudan said in a release Friday that it had launched a “human-machine co-creation service powered by artificial intelligence in collaboration with the Tmall Innovation Centre [or TMIC], enabling customers to comprehend their olfactory vision with unsurpassed sampling speed in China’s unique e-commerce market.”

For somewhat greater than two years, Givaudan and Tmall have worked together to mix fragrance solutions and production capabilities with the T-Lab’s consumer behavior data capabilities.

“’Creatogether’ leverages the newly updated version of the TLAB 2.0, using data from TMIC’s olfactive culture map and Givaudan’s own AI-powered fragrance assistant, Carto,” Givaudan said.

The resulting process is described as a “human-machine fragrance co-creation” attainable in only five steps.

Givaudan explained that those involve the “creative ideation phase, including in-depth research and evaluation; olfactive visual exploration; digital fragrance co-creation with AI quick sampling technology; commercialized fragrance submission, and eventually, recent product validation, launch strategy and marketing plan.”

“Our unique cocreation model allows brands to get deeply involved within the fragrance creation process. Because of a visible touch screen, customers are in a position to quickly realize their olfactory vision. The interactive process is carried out in close collaboration with our perfumers, harnessing the newest data insights from TMIC and the infinite creative capacities of Carto,” said Yaling Li, head of fragrances Greater China and South Korea at Givaudan, within the statement.

Givaudan keeps delving deeper into China. In July 2021, as an example, it said the group had invested in a Series A funding round in Next Beauty China, an incubator for emerging fragrance and wonder brands focused on expanding within the country.