A French court has fined perfume giants including Chanel, Christian Dior and L'Oreal a total of 40 million euros ($53 million) for colluding to keep prices high.
— Read more at Chanel, Christian Dior and L'Oreal fined for keeping prices high. The appeals court was upholding a 2006 decision; also included in the decision were Guerlain, Sephora, Clinique, Estee Lauder, Issey Miyake, Jean Paul Gautier and Yves Saint Laurent, among others.
Huh. Does this mean that prices theoretically aught to have gone down after this ruling? Should there be a noticeable increase in availability at discounters?
I was told by an SA at The Perfume House last summer that they were no longer going to carry Chanel–they said that Chanel expected them to sell in higher volume and they couldn’t afford to continue to carry them.
I feel like there’s probably a lot going on “behind the scenes” with perfume sales that we don’t know about.
Presumably, this would only affect prices in France. And I doubt seriously that prices went down.
I have a (somewhat limited) insight into perfume myself, being an SA, and let me tell you this: it’s quite boring. It’s a lot of legal stuff, paperwork, contracts, someone says we must put their product here not there in the store, etc. The company I work for is currently trying to negotiate contracts with Chanel and Dior, and until they go through we have NO Chanel or Dior stock on the shelves. So, it’s pretty much just become my job to say “no” to people (we don’t have testers even!!).
Regarding the colluding, I can’t say I’m shocked. Shocked that they got caught, maybe…
It’s not a joke, in Brazil, we pay U$155,21 in a 50 ml (1.7 oz) bottle of Dior Homme in the most popular virtual shop.
See below…the suit is not about the high cost, but about price fixing.They can be as expensive as they like so long as they don’t prevent competition between stores.
Don’t just blame the fragrance companies for the high prices (though I am sure they are a big part of the problem). Governments tax these products like crazy because they are luxury products and its much easier to tax perfume than it is to tax a necessity, like food or water. In Buenos Aires fragrances cost about two or three times what they cost in the U.S., in a country where average incomes are about 1/3 of those in America. When I was there last time I took small bottles of perfume to give as gifts and people were very very happy to receive them. Same applies to lipstick, eye liner, etc.
In the US, the same suit was brought against the beauty companies — the argument is not about whether or not they’re fairly priced but about whether or not they’re forcing stores to charge a certain price, or lose rights to carry the scent.