Since I'm probably going to major in marketing, I was thinking of marketing, product, and just plain weird mishaps, product delays, and failures in the fragrance biz. After all, for every Acqua di Gio success story, there's also at least one B*Men failure.
To start off, here's my two nominations:
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Here's two more that I wanted to add:
To start off, here's my two nominations:
- Helmut Lang's Never-Released Vetiver. Touted as the modern-day vetiver a la Cuiron's take on leather, Lang's vetiver was announced way in advance, but just as his relationship with Procter & Gamble was on the ropes. Sadly, this scent was the fragrance equivalent of vaporware in the computer world: it never made it to market.
- Delays². Beaute Prestige International originally promised a February 2006 US launch of Gaultier² to its US retail partners. But it was then pushed back to April, then June (much to the dismay of Sephora USA, who was going to have an exclusive), and finally August. This was all due to pressure from Macy's (BPI's largest US customer), as Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren said something to the likes of "You take a September launch date to coincide with the rebranding of the former May Co. stores that we now own, or we won't give you co-op ad dollars." To be honest, Gaultier² is selling quite well in the US, but the delays forced BPI to look closely at being too reliant on one retailer (in this case, Macy's)... can you say Sephora inside JCPenney?
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Here's two more that I wanted to add:
- Revlon Loses its Flair. Revlon wanted to re-enter the dept. store fragrance market with a chypre named Flair back in 2005. However, Revlon was forced to re-evaluate the decision after the May Co. (which was to have been the launch customer) decided to do the inevitable and merge with Macy's parent Federated Dept. Stores. Basically, Macy's didn't want anything to do with Revlon, so Revlon, already facing big financial losses, quickly shelved the scent after realizing that they couldn't sell it at the likes of CVS/pharmacy, Walgreens, and Wal-Mart and make a profit, either.
- B*Men Gets An F. Thierry Mugler wanted to broaden the reach of its men's fragrance lineup with B*Men... but there were some problems. First, B*Men smelled too similar to A*Men to make an impact. Secondly, it arrived at a time when light aquatics like Kenneth Cole Black and Giorgio Armani's Acqua di Gio (in the US) and light orientals like Jean Paul Gaultier's Le Male (in Europe) were fighting it out for the "who's going to break the $100/€100 million in sales?" game. Thirdly, the name... B-grade? So, in November 2006, Clarins began the process of putting it in the fragrance graveyard.
