Creed Debuts Aventus 10th-Anniversary Bottle
The House of Creed is celebrating its best-selling Aventus fragrance’s decennial with a limited-edition bottle.
Creed Aventus, which accounted for 38 percent of the brand’s sales in the last fiscal year, got a matte black makeover for the anniversary. Launched earlier this month on the brand’s e-commerce platform at the same price as the standard bottle, $435 for 100 ml, the brand has already sold 65 percent of its inventory. It will be rolling out more units to its retail partners next month.
Given the fragrance’s steady popularity, the brand decided to commemorate its original juice, not tinker with the bestseller. “What we offer in Aventus, you can’t do a more elevated version without having another juice. Instead, we wanted to create a collector’s piece so the client could have it for the same price,” said Thomas Saujet, cofounder and president of International Cosmetics & Perfumes, the exclusive marketer and distributor for the House of Creed in North America.
The commemorative flacon’s opaque, black finish isn’t the only new feature of the bottle. The label, which features the number 10 in a ribbon, was meant to pay homage to tailor Henry Creed, who founded the brand in 1760.
Despite the brand’s legacy and old-world appeal, it’s fared well in the digital age, especially as the coronavirus pandemic shut down most of the brand’s retail partners in North America. “Our e-commerce business has grown 50 percent over last year, and including our retail partner sites, it represents about 20 percent of our total business,” Saujet said.
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“It’s huge for us because our online business is not where we’ve been very successful. In brick-and-mortar, we’re able to offer this customer experience at the point of sale, which we can do at a much more elevated level than we can online,” Saujet said.
Saujet attributes the sales not only to a loyal customer base, but broader communications online. The 10th-anniversary edition of Aventus also marks its first digital launch, complete with a virtual launch party and an extensive influencer campaign garnering over 3 million impressions, the brand said.
“We’ve seen a really strong surge in online business that’s really saved us during the pandemic,” Saujet continued. He added that during the confinement period of the pandemic, the brand’s six digital points of sale made between 40 and 45 percent of last year’s sales volume in spite of brick-and-mortar closures.
Cofounder and chief executive officer of International Cosmetics & Perfumes, Emmanuel Saujet, said the brand has grown between 14 and 16 percent consecutively over the past five years. Earlier this year, the Creed family sold a majority stake in the brand to BlackRock LTPC.
The brand’s growth also comes as International Cosmetics & Perfumes is in expansion mode, Saujet said. “We are in the midst of investing in some new brands and launching them very shortly, which we haven’t done in a few years,” he said. “We are going to strengthen our dot-com businesses, and we feel in the luxury space in North America, there will be some great opportunities.”
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