Free Beauty Events

Francois Coty

When you think of Coty, you imagine one of the most successful fragrance houses in the industry. François Coty (1874-1934), while most famous for being a professional French perfumer, was a politician, journalist, millionaire and a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte. Coty (born Joseph Marie François Spoturno dit Coti) he started out peddling his perfumes to barbers, and broke into the big perfume business of Europe through his merchandising genius. Before him, perfume was a luxury item that only the rich could afford. But Coty marketed his perfume as a luxury necessary for everyone and sold perfume affordable to middle and working class women. His bottles were designed by the great ceramist, Lalique, and represented the first time that perfume bottles were designed to be appealing to the eyes. Impressively, Coty invented the concept of a fragrance set (i.e. perfume and soap identical scents). His first huge perfume success was his Rose Jacqueminot scent in 1904 which launched in a Parisian department store. Coty was able to compete on price in America by avoiding high tariffs – he imported the ingredients to New York and manufactured there. Coty expanded product to cosmetics and skin care, and to Europe, Asia, and Latin America. He gave simple talc powder a makeover with his famous white and orange L’Origan box. By 1925, 36 million women worldwide used Coty face powders. In 1923 he was elected Senator in Corsica, but never actually got to act in his elected position due to accusations of bribery. Coty also started the political paper, L’Ami du Peuple, which had a circulation of almost a million. His wealth was so great that he was also able to loan the French government one hundred million francs for war debt. In 1963, Coty’s wife Yvonne sold Coty Inc. to pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. In 1996 Coty Inc. acquired Rimmel (a cosmetics line with products all priced under $4) in 1996 and in January 2000, the brand was introduced to American consumers. Today, it is owned by the German specialty chemical company Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH and is the world’s leading mass-market fragrance house. Coty now has an remarkable collection of celebrity endorsed perfumes by icons such as Shania Twain  and Kimora Lee Simmons.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.