Burberry's New Fragrance: Smells Like Deja Vous

I'm going to the launch of a new Burberry fragrance tonight, Burberry Beat. It's a big deal with red-hot model of the moment Agyness Deyn hosting and a performance by the Fratellis. Great! Only I could have sworn I just went to the launch of a Burberry fragrance. And guess what? I was right. Lisa Rachal, an analyst at Redburn Partners kindly sent me a list of the Burberry fragrances and their launch dates:

Burberry Beat - March 2007 (women's), Sept 2006 (men's)
Burberry London - March/April 2006 (women's), September 2006 (men's)
Burberry Brit - 2003
Burberry Touch - 2000
Burberry Weekend - 1997
Burberry London (original) - 1995

Two things stand out. One, I'm going to the launch party for a fragrance that will not be in stores until March. That's an easy one. The glossy magazines operate on a three month lead time so to get the press and the pix, best to have the party now. Plus Rachal tells me a distributor has an exclusive on the scent from January.

But also the speed of the launches has gone from one every three years to one every year. The executives at Bill Blass told me they also plan to launch a new fragrance every year. Why? Because without a critical mass, a single fragrance just gets lost on the counter. So brands launch a bunch of fragrances so that the stores can put them all together on the shelf and they have a greater chance of attracting attention of passers-by.

Someone once described a fragrance launch as the luxury lottery ticket. The cost to entry is relatively low so failures don't cost much -- except that shelf space -- and if you have a hit, the pay off can be outstanding. Take Thierry Mugler's Angel. It was so successful that they didn't introduce another Thierry Mugler fragrance for ten years.