Sean “P. Diddy” Combs has won awards for his music and his fashion designs. Now, he can add a new accomplishment to the list: Best-selling fragrance.
Unforgivable, Combs’ fragrance for men, has been No. 1 in terms of sales since its national launch on Feb. 10.
Terry Lundgren, the chief executive of Federated Department Stores, which sells the fragrance in its Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores, calls it a runaway success.
Estee Lauder partnered with Combs – known to associates as Puffy – and his fashion company Sean John, to develop and market the scent. The beauty products company says it’s the best fragrance launch its seen in years.
Puffy, Lundgren and John Demsey, Estee Lauder’s global brand president, will be on hand this morning to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
Overall, the prestige fragrance category, defined as scents sold in U.S. department stores, had sales of $2.9 billion in 2005, up 3 percent from the prior year, according to the NPD Group.
But competition for those dollars has grown fiercer, particularly among the burgeoning category of celebrity fragrances, as everyone from Paris Hilton to Donald Trump has come out with a smell of their own.
Analysts said that a combination of unconventional marketing tactics along with Puffy’s own star status helped Unforgivable break from a crowded pack. Sales of Unforgivable are averaging $1.3 million to $1.5 million a week, sources said. Successful fragrance launches usually hover around $650,000 a week, these people continued.
Another big factor was timing. While most fragrances launch in the fall or late spring, Unforgivable hit stores in the dead of winter, meaning it had less competition to contend with.
For that reason, some analysts are withholding judgement as to the fragrance’s staying power.
“It’s easy to be No. 1 in February and March,” said Allan Mottus, publisher of industry newsletter the Informationist. “The true test will be when the competition heats up later this spring.”
While the brand appears to be a big draw for the urban crowd of African Americans and Hispanics, who make up 35 percent of prestige fragrance consumption, Mottus wonders, “Will it travel to the suburbs?”
Puffy and his partners at Estee Lauder laid the groundwork by approaching the launch as they would an album or a movie release.
Samples of Unforgivable were placed in night clubs, complete with links to information about the fragrance that were created to encourage young men to discuss Puffy’s career.
In a departure from the usual advertising for men’s fragrances, which typically focus on bottles of cologne, ads for Unforgivable featured Puffy sitting on a bed with not one, but two women.
The pictures created such a stir that People magazine refused to run the ads and department stores asked for “PG” versions for in-store promotions.
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Soul-ar system
Sean “P. Diddy” Combs is splashing his mark on an ever-growing list of hot properties – from his new fragrance to the upcoming NBC reality TV entry, “Celebrity Cooking Showdown.”