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• • • Sweet smell of success sparks star scents • • •
By Jen Haberkorn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 2, 2006
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• • The scent of celebrities will be all over shopping malls this holiday season.
• • Sarah Jessica Parker, Derek Jeter, and Hilary Duff are just some of the celebrities following the smell of money and releasing fragrances for the holidays, a season when about one-third of perfume sales are made.
• • Celebrity-endorsed fragrances have stormed the perfume industry, driving the industry's first major sales increase since 2001 and making up a growing portion of the top-selling fragrances.
• • Perfume sales at department stores rose 3 percent to $2.94 billion last year, after years of hovering between $2.8 billion and $2.9 billion, according to NPD Group Inc., a market research company in Port Washington, NY. Sales from celebrity fragrances have grown 80 percent to $148.5 million from 2003 to 2005, according to NPD.
• • "They've been terrific. They've brought a whole new customer to an industry that for the last five years has been flat and slow," said Rochelle R. Bloom, president of the Fragrance Foundation, a New York trade group.
• • Britney Spears' wildly successful fragrances - - Curious,which became a top seller in department stores during the 2004 Christmas season, Fantasy, and Curious In Control - - are credited with introducing perfumes to tweens and teens. Elizabeth Arden Inc. is hoping to re-create that success with former Disney Channel star Miss Duff's new scent, With Love.
• • The romance between celebrities and perfumes can be traced to the 1930s, when a bottle of Shocking perfume was modeled after actress Mae West. Elizabeth Taylor made endorsing perfumes glamorous with the success of White Diamonds in 1991.
• • But celebrities started following the scent after Jennifer Lopez's Glow was released (late 2002) and raked in a reported $40 million during its first six months on shelves.
• • Last year, celebrity fragrances made up a quarter of the top 100 selling brands, up from 10 percent in 2003, according to NPD Group.
• • "[Celebrity fragrances] have been very important to the growth we've seen in women's fragrances and we're seeing it to a degree in men's," said Leigh Anne Rowinski, a beauty trend analyst at Information Resources Inc. in Chicago. . . .
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• • Source: THE WASHINGTON TIMES
• • Printed: November 2, 2006
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Mae West
• • Photo: Mae West • • Marcel Rochas • • in the 1930s • •
NYC
Mae West.
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