When Coty launched Rimmel Underground this past February it closed one of its most important real estate deals to date. Several recent failures in colour cosmetics—namely, L’Oreal’s HIP line of intense shades for ethnic consumers and Revlon’s Vital Radiance for women over 50—opened up 10 feet of extra space at every mass retail counter across the U.S. “The only way to maintain that space for colour cosmetics and prevent it from being sold to skincare companies,” says one Coty insider, “was to develop a brand that would be competitive and compelling enough to a appeal to a different core consumer.”

Enter Rimmel Underground. Sliding her way next to industry veterans like Maybelline’s preppy Great Lash Mascara and Cover Girl’s demure eyeshadow quads, Underground introduced herself as Rimmel London’s little sister. Judging from her look—acid greens paired with moody greys and girly-girl pinks all pressed into jagged patterns and packaged under see-through lids in shiny black compacts—she’s clearly the edgiest kid on the aisle.

But nowhere is her experimental image more clear than in her logo: — a coat of arms designed by a London tattoo artist featuring a capital “U” that stands for “Underground” and the text messaging abbreviation for “you” favoured by the 17-24 year old technosexuals this brand is targeting. The “U” is topped by a crown, the hottest symbol going for Generation Y (other than the skull), and book-ended by a unicorn, a perennial girl favourite, and a lion, symbolizing the brand’s all-important British roots. “London is the DNA of Rimmel,” says our expert. “It’s home to most of the music and designers these kids are inspired by—everyone from Björk and the Sugababes to designers of street chic togs like Triple Five Soul. It’s one of those places where you truly have a fully developed Generation Y culture.”

By increasing its presence at mass retail counters, Coty hopes to take back a substantial market share from popular niche brands like Pout, Smashbox, Two Face, Urban Decay and Hard Candy. “Ten years ago the niche category represented 11 percent of the market and today it’s 44 percent,” says our expert. “I don’t know how girls can afford these brands, but they’re willing to pay more for the eye-catching colours and gimmicky packaging. We offer a niche feel, but for considerably less.” Underground shadows and lip lacquers retail for $7.95 and $8.95 respectively.

Noticeably absent from the Underground brand is any mention of technology. “This is not a group who responds to claims like, ‘This mascara is going to make your lashes 30 percent longer’ or ‘This foundation is going to keep away the shine for this many hours,’” says our expert. “They’re young and fresh, so they don’t care about performance claims. These girls are poets and artists at heart, and they’re drawn to textures, finishes and shades they can manipulate to tell a story.”

Underground’s latest story is Light Beam Lipgloss, an all-in-one fruit-flavoured floss in cherry, silver and mauve shades. It comes with a mirror and LED light designed for those occasions when you find yourself lost in the haze of smoke in a club and unable to claw your way to the bathroom mirror. In the language of Y, “It’s slammin’!”

Summer 2007

Five years ago you would have been hard-pressed to find a celebrity striking a deal with a fragrance house. “Celebrity fragrances were viewed as commercially non-viable,” says Catherine Walsh, Coty’s senior vice president of licensing for the Americas.

It’s no secret, the past is littered with star scents that tanked, and from big names that seemed destined to do brisk sales, like Sophia Loren. Then there were the juices of those not-so famous players — like music producer Herb Alpert or socialite and quiz show panelist Dina Merrill — that only made you wonder, WHAT was head office thinking? Elizabeth Taylor was the one success story. Sixteen years after its launch, White Diamonds remains the number one celebrity fragrance in the United States.

The playing field changed, however, in 2002 when, seemingly out of nowhere, Coty launched Jennifer Lopez’s Glow, a sheer floral that ended up dramatically altering the way the industry did business. “Today celebrity fragrances account for seven percent of the prestige market,” says Walsh. “And, as of 2006, they became a separate category.”

The category may be new, but how is the concept different this time around? Walsh explains: “It used to be that stars in the middle or at the end of their careers who knew they could no longer get a great movie or a record deal, would say, ‘Now is the time to do my fragrance.’ This is absolutely not the case anymore. Today celebs, like the Olsen twins, 21, are getting into the game at a very young age because they want to brand themselves, and fragrances are just one of the many licensing opportunities available to them.”

Walsh also thinks that society no longer has an us-and-them attitude towards its stars. “The public feels directly invested in this trend,” she says. “Look at American Idol. Here you have the entire country determining who is going to become the next best thing, with guest stars who have essentially already been ‘voted in’ to mentor them.”

This breakdown of barriers between the limelight and the street affects the way consumers shop. “There are so many diverse retail outlets where you can buy celebrity fragrances today,” says Walsh — from Holt Renfrew to Sears and Shoppers Drug Mart — “that the customer will cross shop and go wherever she has to to get what she wants.”

This kind of determination is great for sales, but retailers also know that the capricious consumer can, without warning, turn what’s hot today into yesterday’s news. “That’s why our development time for celebrity fragrances is so quick,” says Walsh, “six months as opposed to two years or more.”

So, what’s it like working with the stars? “Everyone is different,” says Walsh. “I first met Jennifer Lopez on her second honeymoon in 2001. She had just come out of the shower and the minute she walked into the room, she shook my hand, leaned in and said, ‘Smell me, this is what I want my fragrance to be like.’ She approached the project from a very olfactive point of view, and never looked back. Designer Marc Jacobs, on the other hand, took his time articulating his scent profile. “Marc leads with his eyes, not his nose,” says Walsh. “It took a whole series of questions to move him away from his obsession with graphics and how the campaign was going to look in layout.” But, then, one day he walked into a meeting bearing a sprig of jasmine and announced, “When I open the window to my garden in Paris, there’s this night blooming jasmine that I just love!’ After that our job was easy,” says Walsh

François Coty had a sense of destiny so strong it practically radiated from his pores. In 1908, the 34-year old former haberdasher and journalist with the Rudolph Valentino gaze opened his first perfume shop in Paris in the fashionable Tuileries Quarter. To mark the occasion, he had new business cards printed that stated his qualifications, as he saw it:” Artist, Industrialist, Craftsman, Economist, Financier and Social Scientist.”

Perfecting his signature (soon to be logo) was the next order of business. If ever there was a dead give-away for the breadth and scope of this Corsican native’s ambition, it was in the way he signed his cheques —with a sweeping “C” that appeared to wrap itself around the world and stretch across the page (read: landscape) before catching up with the rest of his name. Apparently, that’s what you did when you were a direct descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte.

But in Coty’s case, his ambition was equally matched by talent. His philosophy was simple: “Give a woman the best product you can, present it in a perfectly beautiful flacon with impeccable taste, ask her to pay a reasonable price and that will be the birth of a business the world has never seen.” Almost overnight Coty was able to change the public’s Victorian attitude toward perfume from a cocked eyebrow to a knowing smile. By 1914, Coty was mass-producing perfumes in France, the U.K. and the United States, but not Canada, which was still importing English flower waters.

Throughout the teens, twenties and thirties, Coty capitalized on his keen understanding of popular culture and, as he saw it, the desire of every woman to step into the fantasy world of heiresses and movie stars. He hired the most sought-after artists of his day — notably Baccarat Glassworks and famed jewelry designer René Lalique — who added gossamer wings and sparkling globes to his perfume bottles and turned the vanity table into a dazzling stage for the imagination. Coty also teamed up with scientists to concoct blends that combined natural and synthetic extracts to ensure the affordability and longevity of his perfumes, everything from Emeraude and L’aimant, two blockbuster scents, to Chypre, his highest creative note. The latter enticed the modern woman to go beyond heavy florals of rose and lavender and try a more earthy blend of citrus, oakmoss and labdanum.

With his success of his fragrances, it wasn’t long before Coty expanded his offering to include creams, soaps and face powders. By the time of his death in 1934 more than 36 million women around the world were dusting the shine off their noses with Coty’s air spun powders.

After the war, under the leadership of Jean Despres, Coty’s star salesman, the company added colour cosmetics to its lineup and created a must-have item with Coty 24, the industry’s first long-wearing matte lipstick from 1955. This was followed in the 1960s by a heady musk scent called Jovan. Launched during the height of the sexual revolution, Jovan, like so many of Coty’s original hits, was designed to capture the spirit of the times.

When Phizer bought Coty in 1968, Despres stepped down and for the next four decades the company went into mergers and acquisitions mode. It purchased Lancaster Skin Care, Rimmel Cosmetics and Unilever’s entire perfume holdings, including its designer fragrances — all strategic conquests that surely would have met with Coty’s approval.

But it wasn’t until the launch of Jennifer Lopez’s JLO Glow in 2002 that the company, now under the ownership of Joh. A. Benkiser, demonstrated some of the excitement and flair of its founder for collaborating with superstars and spotting a trend in-the-making. Today celebrity fragrances is the hottest category going, accounting for seven percent of the prestige market, and Coty Inc. is single-handedly credited with creating and driving this global phenomenon.