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Interview Ferragamo Parfums ceo Luciano Bertinelli s This year the brand launched Signorina Eleganza and Acqua Essenziale Blu, two new fragrances for its pillar franchises n n n What is your focus for Latin America? clean and safe. Our high-end lines and the new products are Brazil is an extraordinary market of 200 million inhabitants, sold in the department stores, while our Young Collection but taxes kill fragrances, so Brazilians who can afford travel, Incanto is retailed in specialty stores and perfumeries. We keep buy their perfumes abroad. Mexico, which is one of our top-10 enlarging this collection specifcally for Japan and other Asian markets, is much more rewarding. Both men and women buy markets; we do this in a quiet, but very successful way. Incanto our products there, and so we are putting a major investment Charms and Shine are bestsellers and I won’t cut these tactical in Mexico. products, which are generating millions. How are you performing in the US, where you have Have you been expanding in Italy as planned? been operating with BPI since last year? The country is afficted by an unfavorable economic context We are growing, although frankly, not as much as I expected. and the fragrance market keeps shrinking, even if sometimes We saw double-digit sales growth in the frst half of 2014 there is a tiny increase. We keep investing—perhaps over- in the department-store channel, which is where the brand investing—in Italy because we are an Italian company and our can express its high-end image. In what I call the secondary products are made in Italy. We also maintain our investment in channel, including specialty stores and perfumeries, we television because fragrances are an extraordinary vehicle of generate more volume. That said, the value of our business brand awareness. Italy is our third-largest market and we still in the US is still very small. Expansion in the US is a priority expect to see double-digit growth, as our recent launches have and we need to invest and stimulate sales. Obviously China is been successful. important considering its potential expansion, but for prestige fragrance at the moment, the market there is still only the size How has travel retail developed? of Belgium or Switzerland. Travel retail is worth 10 to 12% of our global sales and it could reach 15% maximum. By region, we are doing well in Japan used to be your number-one market and has Asia, expanding in America and in the Caribbean, but our now shifted to number fve, have you changed your challenge will be to grow in Europe. In March, we launched strategy there? The Mini Fragrance Collection, a new line that is very Fragrance in Japan only accounts for 4% of the total beauty appealing in travel retail. The collection presents the Signorina market, so we are working in a very small segment. Since and Incanto fragrances in a 20ml spinning top-like bottle 2009, we have been operating in partnership with Kawabe, enclosed in an origami box. It is perfect as a small gift, but a parent company of the holding Itochu. The distribution is also as a purse spray. 24 September-October 2014 - N°19 - BW Confidential