GRASSE – Perfume Capital of the World

I am writing this post over the Atlantic as my week in France draws to a close and it has been a very productive and informative week for me. The plane is virtually empty – not sure if it’s because of the terrorist attacks or because this 767 may have been the first one that was ever put into service and travelers are flying to Dallas Fort Worth instead on a new 777.

I decided to break this blog down into 2 posts to avoid making it too long for my readers. The first part deals with my visit to Grasse and the second part will focus on FIE 2015, so here goes.

After arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport on Saturday, and passing through immigration, I set about to find the right terminal for my Air France flight to Nice. I was immediately struck by 2 things. Firstly, the lack of visible security, apart from a few heavily armed soldiers strolling around, and for a while there I had this insecure feeling deep down inside that was a bit unsettling. Secondly, walking around this vast airport made me quickly realise why many business travelers don’t like flying in and out of CDG.

Despite my uneasiness, I caught my flight and made it down to Nice without any trouble, even security to get into the departures area was no more than usual. I decided to hire a rental car to allow me to better explore the area in my quest to see how many F&F companies I could find, but given that Grasse is only a short drive from Nice you could also arrive there by bus or train quite easily as well.

Grasse leaves you in little doubt that it’s the perfume capital of the world. On the 35km drive inland from Nice, huge signs point you to Galimard, Fragonard and Molinard, the old perfumeries that continue to draw tourists for their organized tours and perfume making workshops. My interest however is not in the retail perfumes but rather the creators of compound Fragrances and Flavours, companies such as Mane, Robertet, Jean Niel, Aromatech and many more, some known and others to be discovered, at least by me.

In the Middle Ages, Grasse specialized in leather tanning. Once tanned, the hides were often exported to Genoa or Pisa, cities that shared a commercial alliance with Grasse. The hides of Grasse acquired a reputation for high quality, but the leather was very smelly, something that did not please the glove wearing nobility. This is when Galimard, a tanner in Grasse came up with the idea of scented leather gloves. He offered a pair of scented gloves to Catherine de Medici who was seduced by the gift. Therefore, the product spread through the Royal Court and high society and this made a worldwide reputation for Grasse. The seventeenth century became the heyday of “Glovers Perfumers’, and the rare scents from the Grasse (lavender, myrtle, jasmine, rose, orange blossom and wild mimosa) certainly contributed to the title for Grasse as the perfume capital of the world.

But Grasse – whose citizens were induced into a giant orgy by the perfect scent in Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume – is about more than just perfume. There are more than 60 active Fragrance and Flavour companies in Grasse and surrounding towns, including world-leaders such as Mane, Robertet, IFF and Firmenich. These companies employ more than 3,500 people in the city and surrounding areas and additionally about 10,000 residents of Grasse are indirectly employed by the perfume industry. The output, however, is not limited to perfumes, and Grasse’s laboratories are just as likely to be creating the perfect scent for a detergent or a particular flavour for a beverage or yoghurt, with food flavoring making up half of the industry here.

I had heard from a number of colleagues in the industry, that Grasse was more widely known for its ingredients rather than compound manufactures, but it turns out that they may have not been to Grasse for quite some time. Over the past 15 to 20 years or so there has been a veritable explosion in the number of Fragrance and Flavour manufacturers in and around Grasse. Relatively new companies rub shoulders with old Grasse establishments that trace their history back over 2 centuries. Jean Niel, started distilling aromatic plants from Provence in 1779 and now the company has expanded into both the Fragrance and Flavour industry under the management of its now 9th generation of family members, which is pretty impressive in this M&A crazed industry that we are in.

I stayed at the Best Western Elixir Hotel in Grasse which was very nice but a bit of a hike up to the old town so lucky I had a car. On Sunday went for a drive to the Loup Gorge, which is an incredibly beautiful valley / canyon dotted with ancient Provence villages such as La Bar-Sur-Loop and Gourdon. As I was driving along the winding roads I came around a sharp corner and immediately to my left was a large factory which turned out to be the headquarters of Mane FILS.

Mane has 2 large sights very near to each other, the newer larger site about 500m higher looking down to the original location half way down into the valley below. (refer photo above) Hard to imagine having a chemical facility in such a beautiful location but this is where Mane started in 1871, when Victor Mane began producing fragrant materials from regional flowers and plants. Since then, this small distillery has grown to become one of the leading Flavours and Fragrances companies worldwide, and has continually been run by the MANE family and most recently under the leadership and guidance of Jean Mane.

Driving around I was like a “kid in a candy shop”. F&F companies were everywhere. Whole industrial estates dedicated to the industry and it was a real thrill to discover new companies that I had never heard off. The new Mane factory has 5 other F&F companies adjacent in just one cul-de-sac. One of my career goals is to build the most comprehensive global data base of companies in the F&F industry and this visit certainly helped me in this regard.

In some ways, it’s surprising that Grasse remains at the epicenter of the scent world. The fields of rose, jasmine, tuberose and mimosa that annually blanket the hills around the town are no longer the precious resource they once were. The rise of synthetic production in the 20th century opened up perfumes for the masses and completely changed the industry. Chanel No 5, was the first scent to be dominated by synthetic smells when it launched in 1921, a trend that exploded after World War II. More recently, global economics has also played its part – 1kg of roses from Grasse today costs 10 times as much as the equivalent from Bulgaria, which has helped contribute to flower production in Grasse falling from around 5,000 tonnes a year in the 1940s to less than 30 tonnes today.

So why does the town’s fragrance industry continue to thrive? “Because it has adapted,” says Han-Paul Bodifée, a major industry figure who is president of the Grasse Institute of Perfumery and the PASS fragrance research cluster, and was until a few years ago the president of the French Fragrance Producers Association. “Fifty years ago, most perfumers in Grasse were producing ingredients as their main source of income. Today, it’s a predominantly creative industry. You can import essential oils from India, Egypt or South America, but what can’t be imported is the know-how that’s here. Grasse is like the Silicon Valley of perfume.”

I for one do not doubt that Grasse will continue to have an outsized influence on the industry and my only regret is that I hadn’t been here before but I will be back again as I look to better understand the industry and its issues and opportunities, as well as seek out companies who are looking for help from Focus International to solve their most pressing problems. After looking at various websites and researching many of the companies, a couple of things stood out to me. Many of them have built reasonable international business compared to their peers in North America but mainly  focused on Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa but so far the Americas and Asia, have not yet been a focus for many of them. Many also use Robots and have very impressive production capabilities compared to their peers in other regions. I also thought about the degree of collaboration that exists especially between the smaller companies but I am sure this is not common, as our industry is quite secretive but with so many forming this unique “cluster” I know there are areas that collaboration makes a lot of sense. Why invent the wheel for everything?

Next blog post, I talk about my visit to Paris for FIE 2015. Thanks again for your interest.