Coty Fights Licence Losses With a Fragrance Club of Its Own

Coty launched a global Fragrance Club in Paris on 15 October, assembling its own perfumers — including Nathalie Lorson, Amandine Clerc-Maitre, Meabh McCurtin, Julie Massé, Fabrice Pellegrin and Delphine Lebeau — with external educators, creators and community leaders from Europe, the UK, US and China.

The move lands less than a year after Coty confirmed the loss of the Gucci licence it had held for a decade, with L'Oréal set to take over the Kering-owned brand's fragrance and beauty development from 2028. It also follows the loss of the David Beckham fragrance line to Interparfums at the start of the year. Two licence defections in twelve months, and Coty's answer is to invest in internal culture rather than new brand contracts.

What does the club actually do?

Members will meet for discussions, workshops, immersive experiences and co-creation opportunities, sharing perspectives on consumer behaviour, cultural trends, creative storytelling and fragrance innovation. Coty frames it as a "global community" that engages directly with its perfumers, and it will continue as an ongoing structure, with teams convening regularly to exchange views on fragrance culture, innovation and consumer engagement strategies.

For Coty's product development teams, the practical value is a standing feedback loop. Six named perfumers, spread across the company's creative roster, now have a formal channel to external voices before briefs are written. That shortens the distance between trend detection and formulation decisions — or at least that is the theory the company is asking the market to accept.

Why now?

Coty pointed to social platforms such as TikTok, which have built new fragrance communities and given experts, educators and creators a platform, particularly among Gen Z consumers. The way people discover, discuss and experience scent has changed rapidly, and the company wants proximity to the communities driving that shift.

Jean Holtzmann, Chief Brands Officer, Coty Prestige, said: "Coty has been creating fragrances for more than a century, but the culture around fragrances is dynamic. Today, new communities and voices are changing how people discover, understand and experience scent. The Coty Fragrance Club brings those perspectives together with our own fragrance expertise, creating a continuous dialogue around where the category goes next."

One century of fragrance making, set against a discovery culture that now turns over in months. That asymmetry is the whole argument for the club.

A structure under rebuild

The Fragrance Club is not Coty's only structural change this year. The company named Soraya Benchikh as CFO, succeeding Laurent Mercier, and on 2 July it put in place a new operating structure that brings commercial decision-making closer to its markets and combines R&D and supply chain into a single function.

The pattern is consistent: faster local decisions, a merged technical organisation, and now a community mechanism for market intelligence. Each piece reduces the layers between a consumer signal and a commercial response.

What it means for the trade

For suppliers, the club signals that Coty intends to defend its prestige fragrance pipeline even after 2028 removes Gucci from its portfolio. For competitors and licensing partners, it confirms that Coty is betting on owned cultural capital — perfumers, communities, storytelling — as the asset that survives licence expiry.

Whether the club produces measurable output — co-created launches, faster trend response, retained talent — will only become visible over the coming cycles. The first data points to watch: any co-creation credited to the club in Coty's next launches, and the shape of its prestige portfolio as the Gucci transition approaches 2028.

In plain words: Coty has lost two licences and is rebuilding around what it still owns — its perfumers and its ability to listen.