Puig Partners with Tmall to Launch Scent Visualizer on the Chinese Ecommerce Platform

While currently in China, just 5% of the population wears fragrance, according to a BCG 2022 Report. Tmall has identified perfume as a strategic growth opportunity, particularly the distinctive category of niche fragrances. 

 

The platform enables everyone to browse, compare and choose fragrances from a constantly updated library, which currently includes some 21,500 scents (WikiParfum). From 2015 through 2020, the Chinese fragrance market maintained a compound annual growth rate of nearly 15%. Over the next five years, market growth is expected to surpass 22%, three times the rate of the global fragrance market, according to Kantar & Eternal Fragrance Report 2021.

Educating consumers is key to future success, which is why Tmall and Puig are introducing China’s shoppers to the vast and fascinating world of perfume. Tmall has launched the Scent Visualizer, an innovative digital technology developed by Puig, which enables even fragrance newcomers to discover, recognize and visualize the scents of perfumes. The Scent Visualizer displays the main olfactive ingredients in a perfume which allows the user to picture, literally, how the perfume smells. It is powered by a visual library of more than 1,400 unique ingredients and a database of 21,500 perfumes (WikiParfum).

 

“As China’s fragrance market continues to grow, there is tremendous interest from Chinese consumers in finding out about new fragrances, as well as buying their favorite scents,” said Bao Ling, fragrance category director from Tmall. “We are excited by the results of this initial Scent Visualizer pilot, in partnership with Puig and look forward to seeing further growth in this category.”

 

Twenty-five renowned international brands have participated in a Scent Visualizer pilot on Tmall over a seven-week period, which delivered promising results: just by adding a simple picture for each perfume, brands’ online gross merchandize volume (GMV) increased by 5% on average. Both conversion rate and average transaction value (ATV) were improved, as consumers made purchase decisions more quickly when they could “read” the scent and were willing to pay more to appreciate the precious ingredients when those were displayed in a clear and coherent way across brands they like.

 

The Scent Visualizer is a collaboration with Fragrances of the World, the most extensive and complete source of information supplied by perfume brands to the industry. In the near future, Tmall plans to launch the Fragrance Finder, a tool powered by the Scent Visualizer that generates personalized recommendations for specific perfume brands and products, based on users’ preferences in terms of ingredients, perfumers, or even mood.

“We are happy to share our expertise and digital ecosystem of technologies to introduce more shoppers to the pleasures of fragrance,” said Camila Tomas, Puig global innovation & new technologies vice president. “We have specially adapted the fragrance descriptions and visualizations to the Chinese consumer, by working hand in hand with Tmall, which has a very impressive consumer-centric and perfume expert team. We expect this first phase to be the beginning of a long-term collaboration which will elevate the fragrance category for China’s fragrance’ lovers.”