Perfume creation has always been a story of ingredients and how they can be artfully selected, dosed and blended to deliver memorable sensorial experiences. To achieve this goal, every self-respecting perfume house, offers its scent designers a palette of perfumery ingredients to work with. Eurofragance is no different, except on two counts. First, our global palette offers both impressive breadth and depth; it counts over 1,200 raw materials. Second, our selection of materials is highly qualitative and includes some rather singular ingredients. But this hasn’t stopped us from recently launching a comprehensive strategic program to heighten the quality of our palette, and for it to be even more aligned with our sustainability philosophy. The new program has been named ICON.
ICON, a strategy for a creative and sustainable palette
In the dictionary, the word “icon” defines someone or something that is admired by others. True icons are few and far between. It takes time to become an icon and for a person, thing or concept to be recognized as an icon with true values that people recognize as such. Certain brands have reached iconic status, and these include a number of perfume names. In fine perfumery, one can think of Chanel No5 or Angel by Thierry Mugler, but this iconic status also applies to other categories of scented products.
We believe that iconic scents can only be created with iconic ingredients. This partially explains why we have named our new ingredient strategy “icon.” The other reason is that, at Eurofragance, ICON is an acronym that stands for “innovation,” “commitment,” “origin” and “nature.” Simply put, the ICON Program stands for two things: a collection of admirable ingredients and a program to select raw materials with proven sustainability values.
It takes admirable ingredients to create admirable fragrances
Historically, a raw material with a beautiful olfactive profile was enough to secure the attention of Perfumers, but at present, an ingredient has to offer even more. Today, Eurofragance Perfumers want to create with ingredients of superior quality that also offer true sustainability values. These are the raw materials that are truly admired.
Our Perfumers, Fragrance Development Managers and all Eurofragancers have full heartedly embraced our sustainability philosophy and follow its motto: “making scents caring for people and planet.”
A collection of collections of quality ingredients
ICON is a collection of collections. After a methodical screening process that evaluates an ingredient’s olfactive properties along with its health and safety profile, it can be considered for inclusion in one of the ICON Collections. Currently, with regards to natural ingredients, there are five distinct collections: Hallmark, Avant-garde, Arabian Dreams, Spanish Splendors and Legacy.
This screening process is led by Natacha Jérome, Senior Technical Perfumer at Eurofragance. She works with several Perfumers and colleagues from the Compliance department. Natacha’s job is comparable to that of a museum curator who has to organize and find ways to showcase different collections around certain themes, standards and olfactive criteria. The next crucial step is to confirm with the supplier that the ingredient is sustainable in at least one meaningful way.
Building a sustainable palette one ingredient at a time
Nowadays, brand manufacturers and marketers want to offer their consumers products that address sustainability issues in a meaningful way. If one or several ingredients, in a given product, can put forwards a sustainable benefit, this is added value that can resonate with consumers who, demand more and more from manufacturers. In the eyes of Eurofragance, to be considered sustainable and to be listed in one of its ICON Collections, an ingredient must offer at least one of five sustainability values. The five sustainability values that Eurofragance currently considers are the following: Environment friendly, Ethically sourced, Biodegradable, Renewable and Upcycled.
While an ICON ingredient can only be present in one collection, for instance Arabian Dreams, it is possible for a particular raw material to have more than one sustainability value.
The ICON Program makes a difference on several levels
There are several reasons why we launched our ICON Program. First and foremost, we want our Perfumers to have access to top-of-the line raw materials to create with. This is the basics to create admirable fragrances. Second, our customers’ brands benefit from perfume creations that are not only high-quality, but that also contain sustainable ingredients. This allows our customers to put forwards certain claims—claims that more and more consumers expect from their brands. But there is one more significant reason why ICON matters. The ICON Program is perfectly aligned with our internal sustainability philosophy. As a company we strive to approach all projects with an ESG mindset. Thanks to ICON, we are getting more suppliers on board the sustainability movement. We do our share for sustainable development, but we can’t do it alone. ICON is a way to motivate our partners to help improve the world we live in.
