The rich history of Coty may never have come about if it wasn’t for a twist of fate back in 1904 -
Joseph Marie François Spoturno was born on 3 May 1874 in Ajaccio, Corsica. He was a descendant of Isabelle Bonaparte, an aunt of Napoleon Bonaparte. His parents were Jean-Baptiste Spoturno and Marie-Adolphine-Françoise Coti, both descendants of Genoese settlers who founded Ajaccio in the 15th century. His parents died when he was a child and the young François was raised by his great-grandmother, Marie Josephe Spoturno, and after her death, by his grandmother, Anna Maria Belone Spoturno, who lived in Marseille.
After spending some years in military service, François met a fellow Corsican named Emmanuel Arène. A politician, writer, and future senator, Arène became François's mentor, offering him a job in Paris as his secretary. In Paris, François married Yvonne Alexandrine Le Baron and took the more French-looking name Coty, a variation on his mother's maiden name. He also met Raymond Goery, a pharmacist who made and sold perfume at his Paris shop. Coty began to learn about perfumery from Goery and created his first fragrance, Cologne Coty.
Through Arène, Coty met Antoine Chiris, a senator and member of the Chiris family, longtime manufacturers and distributors of perfume. At the Chiris factories in Grasse, Coty studied perfumery and began work on a fragrance, La Rose Jacqueminot. On his return to Paris in 1904, Coty set off to sell his scents to department stores, boutiques, and barbershops, but initially met with little success.
“His luck changed when he “dropped” a bottle of La Rose Jacqueminot on a countertop at the Grands Magasins du Louvre, the Parisian department store. Attracted by the scent, customers swarmed the area, demanding to buy the perfume. Coty's entire stock was gone in a few minutes and the store offered him a place on the selling floor for his products. The success of La Rose made Coty a millionaire and established him as a major player in the perfume world.”
This success has continued today, and we can contribute this to the management team and the financial backers who have steered Coty to their enviable position in the beauty world. The Coty team should remind you of the other Global player that we are partnering with, P&G, and too think that these 2 great companies are our partners.
“Our past and future growth can be summarized by the company credo of Faster. Further. Freer,” adds Beetz. “It describes the spirit of Coty Inc.’s growth as a company that acts faster, takes ideas further, and thinks more freely than the competition. We plan to continue on this path of proven success.” - Bernd Beetz (CEO, 2001 – 2012)
Part of Coty’s success has been the way that they package their products –
“Company of the Year: Excellence in packaging – 2009” “In our annual competition, Beauty Packaging polled our more than 7,300 online readers to determine which industry innovator they thought deserved the title of Company of the Year: Excellence in Packaging. Not surprisingly, the company that holds the enviable position as the world’s largest fragrance seller also drew top marks from our readers for its packaging prowess. Here, corporate executives reveal how Coty keeps to its century-old roots by thinking independently, acting creatively—and never losing sight of the power of packaging”
Key to François Coty’s success was not only that he had rapidly learned the fragrance side of the business, but that he had early on realized that the bottle was as important as the scent. In addition to working with Baccarat, François Coty also befriended René Lalique and collaborated with him on many flacons, including that for Le Muguet in 1910. François Coty had achieved his goal: presenting fine perfumes in attractive containers at affordable prices. (If only these masterpieces were readily available today!) Always thinking of presentation, Coty even employed Lalique to design the frosted glass windows of his parfumerie’s New York showroom, which today is the well-known Henri Bendel department store, located on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue
“Coty’s Beauty packaging shares the same core elements of creativity and innovation [as Prestige],” says Beetz. The challenge, he notes, still remains to achieve a unique, innovative and upscale look while delivering an accessible value proposition to the consumer. “This means that we have to use our creativity and innovation in engineering and manufacturing processes to achieve the desired aesthetics at the lowest possible cost,” he says.
“Karen Grant, vice president, NPD Beauty—and a member of Beauty Packaging’s Board of Advisors—cites Coty’s innovation and packaging as key to its success at counter. “Coty continues to help fuel new launch activity in the fragrance market. Never resting on its laurels, Coty continues to look for new partnerships and vehicles to generate excitement and newness into the category. Also, over the past year, Coty has captured attention in the market with novelty in design. With fragrances like Marc Jacobs Daisy and the new Harajuku Lovers line, they have added not only novelty, but a dash of playfulness. This has been a winning combination for Coty for these brands.”
“Any launch is a combination of brand, packaging, juice, price point, etc.,” says Carlos Timiraos, Coty’s group VP Global Marketing “it’s a complicated mix. I think that over the last couple of years, Coty has raised the bar of packaging in the mix of successful fragrance marketing.
“Two of our biggest successes in recent history had packaging that took big risks,” adds Timiraos, “and as a result, the packaging stood out—and made them instant successes when they hit the shelves [Daisy and Harajuku]. We took a risk—and will continue to take risks to excite consumers in this area.”
When you consider how Coty Inc. develops and innovates products, and this includes the packaging side of the product, you can’t help but get excited as to how our collaborative product/s will appear.
“As economic growth in Asia-Pacific gives many countries in the region new-found wealth, this is translating into a plethora of increasingly sophisticated products that are turning the heads of international industry professionals.
The global economic slowdown has seen many consumers in North America and Europe trade down to less sophisticated and lower cost products, which is doing little to fuel demand for innovation.
However, the global economic woes have had little effect on economic growth in Asia, with many countries, including the huge China market, continuing to post annual beauty industry growth rates at well into double digit figures.
One of the most significant categories for growth and innovation in the region has been “skin care”, which has continued to see a steady stream of increasingly sophisticated and functional finished products.
Another trend that has really taken off in Asia before it has made any significant impact in the West is electronic cosmetic devices. Markets such as China, Japan and Korea are leading the way in the development of this category, and are fast catching on to the latest development - devices that combine with product formulations”
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