EXCLUSIVE: Tommy Hilfiger to Launch Newest Fragrance: Impact

Tommy Hilfiger has had music on his mind for his entire career.
The American designer launches on March 1 a new men’s prestige fragrance, Impact, that is born from his love for music that dates back to the days of Jimi Hendrix, The Who and the Rolling Stones, who he had collaborated with a few years ago.
Impact, which is the third global fragrance pillar developed under Estée Lauder, was created for the modern man who “creates his own definition of success,” said Patrice Béliard, senior vice president and global general manager of Aramis and Designer Fragrances for Lauder. The scent has notes of coca leaf accord, citrus, wood and musk packaged in a bottle with a T-shaped cap that nods to the Tommy Hilfiger brand and stores a travel vial.
Impact will retail between $59 and $77 for 1.7-oz. and 3.4-oz. sizes, and will launch with Impact scented products such as a face moisturizer and grooming oil for $40 each and a hair and body wash for $36. The fragrance will be sold at select global doors, including Sephora in the EMEA region, Douglas, Boots and Debenhams in the U.K. and travel retail outlets, which Béliard said “are very important outlets for fragrance and more particularly for men.”
Béliard added about the new fragrance, “The entire platform is around music. This is a very real theme that enabled Tommy to get famous as a brand.”
Hilfiger's relationship with music dates back to the late Sixties when he opened People’s Place, a clothing and record store in Elmira, N.Y. The designer would later tap late R&B artist Aaliyah and Britney Spears for his ads, work with hip hop artists and most recently with R&B singer H.E.R. on a capsule collection with longtime collaborator Lewis Hamilton.
Impact is launching first in the EMEA region supported by global and local campaigns featuring four music artists that were handpicked for the launch. U.K.-based Grammy Award-nominated rock artist James Bay fronts the fragrance’s global campaign and German singer Wincent Weiss is the face of fragrance’s German campaign.
“Tommy has been known to really help and give birth to emerging talents,” Béliard said. Even though the artists tapped for Impact are already "superstars," he said, "they’ll become even more famous and international.”
Impact will launch in each region with a concert, beginning in March 12 in Berlin with Weiss, and later March 24 in London with Bay. The fragrance will also launch in Latin America and Spain later this year, as well as in the South East Asia region. Béliard added that the U.S. launch is coming at the later stage.
“We chose a regional launch. We thought this would give a perfect decor to the impact we want to make. We wanted to strike hard where the brand is super meaningful from a fashion standpoint. It’s a very unique launch. The scent, the choice to have multiple faces and the cadence, it is methodical.”
Béliard did not disclose sales projections and revenue for Impact or the Tommy Hilfiger portfolio, but said “the brand has been growing in the last years and we expect this launch to really contribute to grow the brand by double digits globally in the countries we will be launching.”
Estée Lauder reported in February an 18 percent increase in overall net sales in the EMEA region for the second quarter, and an 8 percent increase in its overall fragrance sales to $581 million in the same period. The company also posted a 3 percent increase in the fragrance segment to $1.043 million for the six months ended on Dec. 31, and an 1 percent decrease in fragrance net sales for 2019 despite an overall net sales increase in the fiscal year.
Béliard said he projects Impact to be ranked “in the top five best launches in each country."
Down the road, Impact may be expanded into a women's fragrance, but the initial focus is on men's “because fragrance is slightly dominate in the men’s category,” he said. "It’s a long-term carefully thought-out process. This is a brand that has a huge potential to grow and become among one of the biggest brands in the industry.”
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