LOT   /  Moncton November Sale 2016  / 

410

Ephemra - FRANCE Paris Coty

Currency:CAD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:20.00 CAD Estimated At:40.00 - 60.00 CAD
Ephemra - FRANCE Paris Coty
SOLD
20.00CAD+ buyer's premium
This item SOLD at 2016 Nov 26 @ 19:21UTC-4 : AST/EDT

Buyer’s Premiums will be added on all items as per the Terms & Conditions of the sale. Invoices will be emailed out following the Coin Cabinet Collector Show.
Ephemra - FRANCE Paris Coty - sheet of 70 labels
Specimen
Size: 14.1/8" x 10.2/8"


François Coty (born Joseph Marie François Spoturno; 3 May 1874, Ajaccio, France – 25 July 1934, Louveciennes) was a French perfumer and businessman. He was a descendant of Isabelle Bonaparte, an aunt of Napoleon Bonaparte. As a young man he did military service and sold women's accessories in Marseilles. In 1900 he moved to Paris and was mentored by his former military commander, a man of some social standing. In the same year he married.
In Paris, Coty again found employment selling women's fashion accessories. Through fortunate circumstances, he met a chemist (pharmacist) who made and sold his own eau de Cologne. Coty tried doing it himself, his friend encouraged him and advised him to take formal training from an established perfumer at Grasse, the center of the French perfume industry.
Coty followed his friend's advice and managed to get himself admitted to the perfumery school run by Chiris, one of the oldest and largest of the Grasse perfume houses. After less than a year, Coty returned to Paris and began creating and attempting to sell his own perfume. Initially he met with rejection.
In 1904, after a flamboyant demonstration, Coty got an order for twelve bottles of his latest creation, La Rose Jacqueminot, from the Grands Magasins du Louvres, a major Parisian department store. Additional orders came quickly and, with assistance from Chiris and others, Coty found himself becoming famous — and rich. Coty was both a talented perfumer and a brilliant marketer. He was the first to recognize that an attractive bottle was essential to a perfume's success. Though La Rose came in a Baccarat bottle, Coty's most famous collaboration was with the great ceramist and jeweler René Lalique, who designed many of Coty's bottles.
Besides pioneering the concept of bottle design, Coty was responsible for making perfume available to a mass market. Before Coty, perfume was considered a luxury item, affordable only to the very rich. Coty was the first to offer perfumes at many price points. His expensive perfumes, in their Lalique and Baccarat bottles, were aimed at the luxury market, but he also sold perfume in smaller, plainer bottles affordable to middle and working-class women. Coty perfume bottles, though mass-produced, were carefully designed to convey an image of luxury and prestige. Coty also invented the idea of a fragrance set, a gift box containing identically scented items, such as a perfume and matching powder, soap, cream, and cosmetics.
François Coty took the elegant and bold design of an eagle holding three balls in his talons, enscribed in an oval with latin inscription "omnia domat virtus" (virtue conquers all things), resting under a crown; he used it on his legendary masterpiece, Chypre.
In 1908, Coty relocated his manufacturing headquarters to Suresnes, just outside Paris. He acquired property in the area and began to build what would become "La cité des Parfums", a large complex of laboratories and factories that manufactured his products. "La cité" had 9,000 employees and was able to manufacture up to 100,000 bottles a day. This allowed Coty to meet the burgeoning demand for his products in France and abroad.
After World War I, demand for French perfume grew at a rapid pace. Many American soldiers had been stationed in France during the war and they brought back Coty perfumes to their wives and relatives. Coty realized the importance of the lucrative American market and began to distribute his products in the United States.
In 1921, with the help of executive Jean Despres, Coty created an American subsidiary in New York to handle the assembly and distribution of its products in the American market. The American offices assembled their own Coty products from raw materials sent by the Parisian factories, thus avoiding the high tariffs on luxury products in the United States. This allowed Coty to offer more competitive prices on its products. Later, additional subsidiaries were established in the United Kingdom and Romania.
Coty soon expanded his product line to include cosmetics and skin care, and expanded his distribution network to Europe, Asia, and Latin America. By 1925, 36 million women worldwide used Coty face powders.
Coty became one of the wealthiest men in France and his fortune was estimated at US$34 million. He used his wealth to gain a foothold in politics. After 1929 his wealth diminished considerably. Some of his other business ventures began to fail and his perfume business was affected by the 1929 Wall Street crash, but it was his divorce that contributed to his financial ruin. He paid his wife millions in French francs then defaulted on the third payment due to financial hardship. The court ruled in his wife's favor and granted her ownership of most of his fortune. He died in 1934 at his home in Louveciennes. In 1963 his ex-wife sold Coty to pharmaceutical giant Pfizer with the stipulation that no member of the Coty family would be involved in the company. In 1992 Pfizer sold Coty to the German company Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH, which it owns today.
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