PARIS — To speed up its burgeoning luxury and prestige perfume business, the Estée Lauder Cos. Inc. plans to open a fragrance atelier in Paris next yr.

“Fragrance has been a winning category for the corporate — for the reason that early days, after we established fragrance with the Estée Lauder brand [in 1953],” Stéphane de la Faverie, executive group president at Lauder, told WWD, adding that over the past few years the category has been increasingly successful for the group.

Reported net sales of the corporate’s perfume business, which incorporates the brands Tom Ford, Estée Lauder, Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, Le Labo, Kilian Paris, Clinique, Jo Malone London, Aerin Beauty and Aramis, have grown almost 40 percent since fiscal yr 2019, pre-pandemic.

Lauder, whose fragrance activity has posted 10 consecutive quarters of no less than double-digit organic net sales growth through the tip of fiscal yr 2023, is investing within the category’s long-term opportunities with the atelier.

“Now we have a really strong portfolio of fragrances,” said de la Faverie. “And we really need with this atelier to construct on the success that we’ve got had for a lot of, a few years. We want to speed up and to proceed to outpace the fragrance market that we’re seeing accelerating world wide.”

France was chosen for the atelier’s location for the reason that country is the cradle of perfumery and lots of innovations stem from there. Paris can also be where Lauder has its French offices, as do the top offices of the likes of Frédéric Malle and Kilian. Jo Malone’s headquarters, in London, isn’t distant either.

“Additionally it is where most of the houses — the perfume houses, partners and ingredient suppliers, packaging suppliers and manufacturing suppliers are based,” said de la Faverie. “So for us it is absolutely giving us the flexibility to be near our historical partners with whom we would like to strengthen our partnership.”

The goal can also be to have access to the highest creative talent, “to proceed to unlock breakthrough product, breakthrough packaging, conceptual innovation and to make it occur at greater speed,” said de la Faverie. “Because consumers love luxury fragrances, prestige fragrances, they usually consistently wish to see them coming faster. We really need to preserve this quality at scale.”

The atelier is as a consequence of open by the tip of 2024 and expand in phases.

“At first it’ll be small, because we would like an agile team working very near our suppliers,” said de la Faverie.

“The atelier’s predominant objective is to be focused on innovation,” the manager underlined.  Working there shall be product developers and conceptual marketers, who will help bolster brands inside the Estée Lauder group.

The atelier’s exact location in central Paris shall be revealed at a later date.

“We’re really specializing in enabling the portfolio of brands that we’ve got today. It’s about breakthrough innovation, speed, agility, artisanal quality at scale,” summed up de la Faverie, adding this could grow and increase the worth of those brands in markets world wide.

It’s banking for the long run.

“We actually consider that the category of fragrance will proceed to speed up in the long run,” said de la Faverie.

Years ago, Lauder identified what it calls “the inversion of the pyramid” — involving a rapid acceleration of luxury and area of interest fragrances — beginning to happen.

“Consumers are in search of reinforcement of storytelling and experience, and better quality in fragrances,” the manager said.

Then throughout the pandemic, the attention of luxury and prestige fragrances accelerated tremendously online. And that was not only for traditional scents, but additionally for those in categories resembling home and bath and body.

Premium fragrances generated sales of $37.7 billion in 2022, an 8.8 percent on-year increase, in accordance with Euromonitor International.

The highest of the pyramid represents about 15 percent of the overall fragrance sales, nevertheless it is registering 2.5- to 2.6-times faster growth, de la Faverie said.

Eighty percent of the segment’s growth is being driven by young consumers — Millennials and Generation Zers.

There are also recent markets, resembling China, opening as much as fragrance.

“We proceed to see this acceleration,” said de la Faverie, explaining one other factor contributing to the move is the proven fact that there may be potential to broaden the group’s luxury and prestige fragrance brands’ distribution, which today is proscribed.