Celebrity brands help lift sales at Fragrance Shop

The company has 135 stores, but wants to capitalise on the sector’s growth by opening another 100 sites over the next five years, creating around 500 jobs.

The group, which has stores across Yorkshire in Wakefield, York, Bradford, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Doncaster, Hull, Keighley and Scarborough, is the UK’s largest independently-owned perfume retailer.

It group’s sales rose £70.4m in the year to March 31.

The best selling products across its 700-strong range including new launches from Jimmy Choo and Diesel.

It said there had been a sharp rise in sales among younger customers, including celebrity-branded fragrances such as Justin Bieber’s Someday as well as Dazzle and Be Reem from reality TV show, The Only Way is Essex.

The sales figure was helped by 22 store openings and growth of nine per cent at those stores open for more than a year. Underlying profits rose 24 per cent to £9.3m.

The company said sales of men’s fragrances increased at their fastest ever rate, accounting for 40 per cent of sales and fuelled by new product launches such as Gucci Guilty Pour Homme, as well as continued growth from existing brands including Paco Rabanne’s 1 Million.

Men’s fragrances accounted for three of the top five selling brands, led by Hugo Boss Signature, Paco Rabanne’s 1 Million and Escape by Calvin Klein.

The two top selling female perfumes were both by Dolce &Gabbana, Light Blue and L’Imperatrice

Recent figures from Mintel show the perfume market generated UK sales of £1.4bn in 2011, with analysts predicting growth of 45 per cent over the next five years.

The report also said the UK is the world’s fastest-growing market.

In terms of its own expansion, the company said six new sites have already had contracts exchanged including Plymouth and Blackpool, with a further 20 targeted during the remainder of 2012.

The Fragrance Shop was founded in 1995 with a single store in Liverpool. It now employs 700 people, including over 100 at its new head office and warehouse facility in Manchester.

All of its fragrances are sourced directly from the fragrance houses themselves, which means there are no grey market products, no copies and no testers.