Paris (AFP)

In need of a gift idea for Christmas? Many people will drop a perfume at the foot of the tree, sometimes wondering what is really so expensive in these small bottles of delicious aromas.

The French are passionate about perfume: for so-called prestige perfumes, not sold in hypermarkets, the market amounted to 2.2 billion euros in 2018, which makes France the first European country in terms of spending . In the top prize list, some great successes come back, among which in first place in 2019 La Vie est belle by Lancôme for women, and Bleu by Chanel for men.

The key to these purchases? "Access to brands that make you dream", analyzes Delphine Dion, professor at Essec Business School. "Buying Dior J'adore is above all buying Dior, it's buying a share of these luxury brands that we don't necessarily have access to," she said.

"Our customers buy above all a story, a dream", we note at Lolita Lempicka. "Our romantic universe is transcribed by regressive olfactory scents and a bottle as an art object".

But dreaming comes at a price. According to the specialized firm NPD, the average cost of a perfume, in store, is almost 63 euros against about 46 euros in 2006. The subject of the real cost is in any case taboo, and the big brands prefer to refer to the creation process , which sometimes lasts for years.

The sector also evokes expensive natural raw materials. Thus, "jasmine is extremely expensive, several thousand euros per kilo," said for example Marie-Caroline Renault, managing director of the perfume house Le Couvent.

- New players -

However, "there are a lot of natural essences that we cannot use because they are prohibited by European regulations, so there are a lot of synthetic essences," observes Gachoucha Kretz, professor of marketing at HEC, specialist luxury, stating that these are of good quality.

The bottles can also represent an item of expenditure. "We rarely use standards like many houses," says one at Lolita Lempicka.

But at the heart of spending, advertising and marketing take the lion's share, essential as the competition rages, with 430 new perfumes launched last year in France, according to NPD. If the figures are kept secret, industry players speak of an ex-factory cost of around 15% of the final price, and around 40% once the marketing costs are added.

"In the economic model of large luxury houses, what contributes to the selling price of perfume in stores, these are enormous costs of marketing, launch, muses, advertising on TV," says Ms. Kretz. Without forgetting the distributors' margin, then that of the points of sale.

Faced with this, new players are emerging, betting on social networks and purely and simply reducing the advertising budget.

"Everything goes through public relations," says Céline Verleure, who in 2011 created Olfactive Studio Parfums. "Everything that we don't advertise, we put in the quality of the perfume," she adds.

"We made the choice to say that we can put the best possible quality of raw materials, and that this is what will convince consumers", also underlines Marie-Caroline Renault, who explains that a more classic "would increase the price of our perfumes by 50%".

For Maxime Garcia Janin, who founded in 2016 Sillages, a house offering the possibility of personalizing his perfume online, this is a completely new development model, the internet allowing savings on "media plans and margins very important distributors. " "All this money can be reinvested in perfume with beautiful natural ingredients," he says.

"For some people, luxury will be a big house, a muse, a projected imagination. But there is also another movement which is gaining momentum, the return to real luxury: luxury is a beautiful product that suits me, "he says.

© 2019 AFP