Interview – Maison Francis Kurkdjian (continued)
Standing out from the crowd
Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s obsession with creativity colours Chaya’s view of the surging global proliferation of niche fragrances in recent years. Rather than fretting about competition and responding hastily to it, he insists it is about sticking to principles.
“When you’re in a crowd of people shouting, and you’re trying to shout louder, no-one’s going to hear you. Eventually, all that people will hear is noise. What we’ve learned throughout our experience is never to lose sight of who we are, and never to lose sight of what is important.
Select distribution is a strongly held principle for Maison Francis Kurkdjian. “A lot of brands want to open an entire network overnight. We don’t believe in that: we believe in opening door by door, focusing on the experience, and climbing our way up to the top in every door,” Chaya comments. Pictured is the rue d’Alger boutique in Paris.
“Our point of difference is underlined by our commitment to the extraordinary – the extraordinary genius of creativity, of extraordinary craft, and of an extraordinary customer journey at the point-of-sale, and the deep belief that what is made with time is respected by time,” says Chaya.
“Our strategy has always been to religiously apply strategies where we feel comfortable expressing who we are in the right way.”
Chaya says Maison Francis Kurkdjian resists pressure for instant reward or quickfire success. “Do not fear very successful brands that come overnight and sell a lot because eventually we are going to conquer their market share with meaning,” he adds. “So we need time and we need intimacy with our customers.
“It took us about ten years to become market leaders in the US. We were exclusive to Neiman Marcus for seven years; we worked passionately with our customers and with Neiman Marcus. And we did the same in the UK and everywhere else – it’s about time and passion.”
Scents and sensibility in China
The same applies to China, a market that has undergone profound, almost unforeseeable growth in fragrances over recent years.
“History repeats itself. The situation we’re seeing in China with fragrances is something we’ve seen in other fields before,” Chaya observes.
“Take technology, for example. It took the Western world about 20 years to climb the ladder of innovation in broadband and mobile technology. As a child who grew up in France, I remember my first internet connection was through a modem that was analogue. Today’s world would not function with the bandwidth we had at the time. My first mobile phone was an old phone without a screen, where we sent texts by typing on the numbers.
“But when China woke up to technology and to broadband, they rolled out the crème de la crème immediately to its consumers. So when Chinese consumers embraced digital and embraced the internet, they embraced it immediately with broadband and wireless. And so they were able to invent an ecosystem that was extremely new, extremely effective and efficient, and totally different from the rest of the world.
“That was not because Chinese people are fundamentally and inherently different. They are people like us with emotions, fears, loves, ideas and ambitions.
Maison Francis Kurkdjian is making the right kind of waves in China. Pictured is the brand’s new boutique at China Duty Free Group’s recently opened Global Beauty Plaza in Haitang Bay, Sanya {Photo: China Duty Free Group}.
“It’s just that they had the opportunity to start from a blank page with the best of the best. And because there are many people living in China, it becomes very, very visible and the marketplace is so huge that the inbound market is an entity in itself. It doesn’t need the rest of the world.”
The parallel with fragrances is clear, he says. “About 20 years ago, there was a rise in the niche fragrance segment in Europe and the US. Nothing new. It was driven by people wanting to move away from designer and celebrity brands that were mass marketed and mass distributed under the ‘masstige’ category – a combination of mass market and prestige brands – literally designer and celebrity brands that were available in over 50,000 doors.
“People wanted to move away from that and embrace a new category that was more limited in its distribution, more creative in its packaging, sharper in its storytelling, edgier in its composition. Fragrances that were not meant to please the maximum number of people, and could also be disruptive.
“Maison Francis Kurkdjian is a native of this movement,” he continues of the huge boom across Europe of niche fragrances two decades ago. “However, we are not a niche brand. We had to fight against this movement where standard marketing approaches were being used to celebrate more creative, narrower-audience scents, but still with the same ingredients. That became more important than eventually what goes into the bottle and who creates what goes into the bottle.
“Of all these brands that flowered and boomed in the 2000s and 2010s, only a few like us became leaders because they were able to demonstrate a very specific, creative and renewable know-how. Of course, we all have to know marketing execution, finance and sales and drive extraordinary teams to succeed. But desirability is only the consequence of a very specific know-how – and that is a creative know-how.”
(Continued on next page.)
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The Moodie Davitt eZine
Issue 334 | 12 May 2024
The Moodie Davitt eZine is published 14 times per year by The Moodie Davitt Report (Moodie International Ltd). © All material is copyright and cannot be reproduced without the permission of the Publisher. To find out more visit www.moodiedavittreport.com and to subscribe, please e-mail kristyn@moodiedavittreport.com