Women's Fragrances

According to The NPD Group’s latest figures, the French women’s fragrance market saw overall growth of 4% between 2006-2010 when it came to value sales, totalling €1.2bn in 2010 alone. On the other hand volume sales declined by 6% over the same period although the total in 2010 was shown to be 22.5m units, still a respectable figure. Fine fragrance is still the most popular type of scent in the women’s fragrance market in the country with many French women choosing to spend a good proportion of their fragrance budget on it.

The women’s fragrance market in Germany is also doing well with figures from Symphony IRI Germany showing that the women’s fragrance market here grew by 1.5% in value terms in 2010, growing from €1.12lbn to 1.138bn. Volume sales were also moving in the right direction, putting on 1% to grow from 51.41m units in 2009 to 51.95m units last year.

The Italian women’s fragrance market showed even more promise with a growth of 3.1% to make €570.16m in the past year, according to trade industry body Unipro. Of this total perfumery shops accounted for the majority share with €493.62m worth of the sales which goes to show the power of this retail chain in the country. The perfumery channel in particular has seen something of a revival in the country after a poor performance in previous years, it put on 3.2% in 2010.

Things were also looking rosy in Spain with gains seen in both value and volume terms, according to the latest figures from Symphony IRI Spain. The women’s fragrance market, including mass and selective sales totalled €500.05m in 2010, a gain of 0.9%, while the volume sector fared even better seeing a 6.1% gain to total 19.33m units. In value terms the selective fragrance market really dominates, while in volume terms there is a much more even split.

The UK women’s fragrance market came up smelling of roses in 2010 with sales jumping 12.1% to £929.91m, up on £829.35m the previous year, according to figures from Kantar Worldpanel. Fine fragrance continued to dominate the UK women’s fragrance sector taking an 85% share of the market in 2010, a growth of 11.3% on 2009. However mass market female fragrances saw a 17.7% lift, taking their share of the market to 14%.