The Perfumist app has just had a major breakthrough in duty free and travel retail. Lagardère Travel Retail – which has been experimenting with it at Nice Côte d’Azur and London Luton airports, is to roll it out at its core locations of Paris Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports from next month. That will give the app exposure to over 100 million travellers.
The French travel retail giant is also implementing Perfumist across other European locations in this quarter giving the app further prominence in the channel.
Executive Vice President Marketing & Digital at Lagardère Travel Retail – Duty Free & Luxury, Stéphanie Metz Thevenod described the app as “a refreshing and hugely innovative tool to empower our staff and engage customer in the perfume category”.
Here, the founder of the app, CEO Frederick Besson, talks exclusively to Kevin Rozario about how Perfumist came about, why it will have a significant impact on the world of travel retail, and what’s coming next.
Why did you think an app to select perfume preferences would be a good idea?
I have been a retailer in Asia with up to 12 stores and over 1,000 fragrances from 120 brands. Lots of customers would get lost in this sea of offerings and needed help.
Approximately 2,000 new fragrances were released in this region in 2018 which is about ten times more than 20 years ago. Our internal research showed that 50% of consumers were not happy with the fragrance they purchased, or that they were being offered. Some even got used to the fact that they would have to buy three to four fragrances before they found one they liked – unbelievable!
Using artificial intelligence, Perfumist was designed to help users find the right fragrance within two minutes, based on notes and ingredients.
How long did it take to develop the Perfumist app?
It was four years in the making and one year in the test phase in selected stores and duty free around the globe. The app now has a database of 25,000+ perfumes (and counting) from 1,500 brands – and it works in 30 languages (50 by the end of the year). From helping customers in a few shops in Asia we are going to be helping millions worldwide – an interesting challenge.
Was it also challenging from a brand/retailer partner perspective?
Every innovation goes through three stages, they say. People find your idea ridiculous and laugh, then find it dangerous, then brilliant and useful! We now get to stage three rather quickly as we have proved to retailers and brands that we are here to help the user, to create value not destroy it.
At first some did not understand this point. Now a lot of major brands are partners, and retailers around the world (duty free, perfumeries, department stores, online stores, etc.) contact us about a partnership.
What about the reaction from the people that matter most – the consumers?
Perfume lovers are really onto it and can spend hours searching for their best perfumes and learning about them. The real success of Perfumist is its community, about 30% of whom are ‘perfumeholics’ or seem to be. The global locations where this community now exists tells its own story (see map). All this has been the result of organic growth.
People have searched for the word ‘perfume’ on Apple’s app store or Google Play and found Perfumist. For some time now, it was ranked first or second in app stores worldwide in this category. Because Perfumist is an app for and by users, new features can be proposed – but always validated – by the community. Perfumist is 100% free for users and we will change the world, one store at a time!
The app is appealing to consumers but what’s in it for travel retailers and brands?
Good question. For brands, the first partnership is free and allows us to provide our community with carefully-checked information (fragrance images, descriptions, year of launch, notes, etc). Thereafter we can provide worldwide information and detailed general data per continent, per country or even per city for these products. We can also access the community through the Perfumist user database if brands have something interesting or relevant for users (samples, games, etc.).
For retailers, including duty free retailers, the advantage is obvious. We link the shop product and price database to the Perfumist database so that the app can advise customers while in their store. All notes and ingredients selected by the user are compared with the store assortment.
It goes like this: Shopper: “Perfumist, show me all fragrances in this shop with jasmine or oud.” The app will answer. Whether a store has ten fragrances or 5,000, we can help a customer make a selection. We geo-position users so they can find the right perfume inside the store in minutes.
Doesn’t this negate the need for beauty advisors?
Not at all. Beauty advisors are also empowered and continuously trained. By using Perfumist on tablets when helping customers who don’t have the app, they get to memorise notes and ingredients and educate themselves. It works wonders in duty free where the assortment is gigantic. By using Perfumist in stores, retailers train their beauty staff, offer an original digital service, and create a unique experience.
Is the app also a perfume e-commerce platform – or planned to be one later on?
We do not have an e-commerce platform and do not want one. From day one, we decided not to sell to our community. It’s a matter of credibility and independence. This way we are not favouring one fragrance over another based on pricing criteria. We can, however, help online selling platforms offer better advice to their shoppers based on notes and ingredients.
Where are your main sources of revenue, and what is the future potential?
When partnering with retailers, for €200/month/store, they get to provide beauty insights using tablets while customers using their smartphones get the best advice to chose the right fragrance for them while their store.
We track a minimum 5% increase in sales when using the app, and roughly 50% more per basket. This suggests consumer confidence in the app’s information. Customers who understand the app’s power will even buy fragrances as gifts using just some basic information about the giftee’s preferences beforehand. The return on investment is obvious.
Will Perfumist bring new consumers into the fragrances segment or is it more for existing enthusiasts?
Interesting question. Our motto is “Bringing more perfumes to people, more people to perfumes”. When you see the exponential growth of our community worldwide and their testimonies… you get to understand that Perfumist can really change the way customers are choosing their fragrances.
We have excited a whole new population that left the fragrances market because it was too complex to them. We have huge communities in emerging countries where we get emotional testimonies from users on our simple tutorials explaining the importance of top/middle/base notes as well as concentration rates. Populations from India, China and even Africa are becoming very important communities using Perfumist on a regular basis.
Do you see further take-up among duty free and travel retailers?
We are expanding our partnership with Lagardère Travel Retail this quarter which is very exciting. Duty free retailers and airports are clearly interested by Perfumist as it also helps customers to be autonomous and independent in-store and bring in extra sales. This is important for groups like headphone-wearing GenZs who won’t interact with beauty advisors but who will interact with the Perfumist push notifications on their phones.
How will Perfumist develop in the coming years?
We aim to grow our community worldwide to one million this year and possibly 20 million by 2020. Partnership with retailers – both online and offline – are definitely a request from users as they want to get the best possible advice based on the perfume environment they are in. Today we cover four continents but not all countries and we shall continue building our network worldwide.
