• by Christine Bittar , March 5, 2007

Testing the waters with a more unified merchandising strategy, Coty Prestige and Lord & Taylor have collaborated on a fragrance bar to consolidate the former's numerous brands. The Coty "retail kiosk" was unveiled on Friday at Lord & Taylor's Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan.

The fragrance bar--which features a whopping 18 brands--in the short term is expected to double Coty's fragrance business at Lord & Taylor, according to Bob Taylor, SVP/specialty stores for Coty Prestige North America.

If successful, the new merchandising format will also likely be expanded to other Lord & Taylor stores as well as other specialty stores.

Brands which are part of the consolidation include Calvin Klein, Sarah Jessica Parker, Vera Wang, and Marc Jacobs--as well as brands Coty distributes through a partnership with Puig, including Nina Ricci, Carolina Herrera and Prada. As other brands are launched, they will also be added to the kiosk.

In addition to combining the entire collection, the area will also serve to provide better branding opportunities for Coty Prestige all around, with bigger counter images and displays, logos, and ad campaign reprints.

The kiosk will be attended by six uniformed fragrance consultants who will be cross trained and more equipped to entice an uninterested consumer from one Coty brand to another, rather than lose her to a non-Coty brand.

This effort comes just two weeks after Coty formally announced it was combining its North American, European and Asia units under a single global business unit, Coty Beauty--another indication of attempts to consolidate the company's internal and external structure.

Unlike Coty, most other fragrance brands--like Ralph Lauren, Liz Claiborne, and Tommy Hilfiger--have long clustered fragrance SKUs together at beauty counters. Indeed, a merchandise consolidation for Coty brands seems quite overdue.

Reps were not able to comment on this point by press time. However, the reason for Coty's somewhat scattered format as opposed to competitors seemingly stems from its previous internal structure, a higher than average number of miscellaneous licensing and distribution deals, a very wide variety of brand price points and the sheer number of brands sold under the Coty Prestige umbrella.

"It's important to present consumers with Coty fragrances as a cohesive whole," says Taylor. "This will provide consumers with a hands-on opportunity to experiment with dozens of Coty fragrances while simultaneously grasping a full sense of the wide spectrum of fragrances [we] offer."

Taylor also says that Lord & Taylor was selected for this first effort because of available space in the store as well as "Coty's strong partnership" with the store.

Separately, Coty's newest celebrity license will be with waif-like supermodel Kate Moss, who will co-create a line of signature fragrances. Moss has been the global face for Coty's color cosmetics line Rimmel London.

The new line, which is not yet named, is slated to launch this fall in Europe, the Middle East and Australia, arriving in the United States thereafter. Products will include eau de toilette, eau de perfume and ancillary items like body wash and lotions.