The Sales Growth of Fragrance Isn’t Sustainable but It Sure Is a Fun Ride
As we’ve grown more and more used to being less in contact with people our normal idea of beauty has altered. Wearing our favorite red lipstick has become a thing of the past has a mask hides our mouth or doing a full face of makeup only to work from home isn’t really in the cards for a lot of us.
But no one, no one saw the boom in fragrance that came last year. The NPD Group, an American market research company, noticed that the fragrance category had an 82% growth spurt the past year.
Fragrance doesn’t exactly fall into the self-care revolution we saw during COVID but it was an escape for some consumers and it drove sales way up as shoppers purchased larger bottles of new and fond favorites. Sales reached an incredibly high which many brands took full advantage of by relaunching scents with newer formulations and campaigns for popular fragrances like Miss Dior who’s legendary formula changed still strikes conversation in lovers of the original juice.
The method behind the madness is that consumers just wanted to “treat” themselves which encouraged such dramatic growth in this category.
As a lover of fragrance who’s very passionate about the topic, I thought this was an interesting marketing study. I personally blame Tiktok as well with many creators pimping our higher-end, luxury houses like Maison Francis Kurkdjian, Kilian, Tom Ford, and more.
The real question that begs to be answered would be, “Is the growth sustainable?” Sadly, it’s probably just a rapid growth spurt that will return back to its original growth as we return to normal life more and more and makeup takes more of a dominant step in the industry once again. Already the high took a little bit of a plunge according to NPD Group’s research.
As someone who is incredibly passionate about fragrance, I love people are perhaps discovering it for the first time or even nurturing their own love of it in a new way. I’d love to see further growth because it does give the industry more of a foothold to create newer scents or even bring back formulas long gone. But sadly, I have doubts this will last and marketing research shows the same.
It’s interesting to see growth in this category though.
Did you purchase more fragrances during the pandemic? Did you find yourself indulging in new scents?
Do share!