Key Takeaways:
Jean Madar has been in the fragrance business since founding Interparfums in 1982 and becoming its chief executive in 1997. One could argue the French executive has seen it all as one of the biggest players in the industry alongside competitors Coty and Puig, which started off as pure fragrance houses. Yet the recent slowdown—paired with the continued resilience of the category—is prompting a shift in how the New York- and Paris-listed company thinks about scaling the business.
“Next year will be a year where the growth will be modest, similar to 2025, but we are gearing up for 2027,” Madar said in an interview just hours ahead of releasing a full-year outlook that guided for a 1% increase in sales to $1.48 billion and a 5% drop in profitability to earnings per share of $4.85.
Interparfums is watching the fragrance market return to more normal levels after several years of explosive expansion driven by the coronavirus pandemic and a continuing wellness wave. Today’s low-single-digit sales guidance follows years of low-double-digit gains, but consumer interest remains, Madar said.
The company will focus its resources in 2026 toward building distribution for upcoming strategic launches, including Off-White and Longchamp—both scheduled to begin distribution in 2027—while also investing behind “blockbuster” rollouts planned across its broader portfolio. Among them: two new fragrances for Coach (one for men and another for women), fresh interpretations for Lacoste’s Original franchise and L.12.12 line, a men’s extension for Jimmy Choo, and further growth for Montblanc’s Legend franchise. It will also further strengthen the portfolios of Rochas, Karl Lagerfeld, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Lanvin with a new wave of fragrances.
A key factor weighing on Interparfums’ performance compared with a couple of years ago are US tariffs on European goods —currently set at 15%—which the French industry federation FEBEA warns could translate into a 21% decline in exports to the US.
The tariff has become a real drag on margins, Madar said, explaining that the only way to offset it is through price increases “by a little,” where possible. Most fragrances sold by Interparfums are imported from Europe, with France and Italy being the world’s two biggest fragrance producers—meaning the 15% duty hits a large portion of the portfolio. Manufacturing more in the US will soften the impact for certain brands, he added. “But otherwise yes—in our numbers for 2025 and 2026, tariff is definitely taking a piece of our profit.”
The company is now weighing the possibility of manufacturing more perfumes in the US for brands like Guess, whose business is heavily concentrated in the American market. But for most of Interparfums’ designer labels, production still takes place in Europe—and those imports are directly exposed to the tariff issue.
“Tariffs are now at 15%—but for a while there was the uncertainty that it could have been 20%, 25%, 30%—and all this uncertainty did not help the business for this year,” Madar said. “We now know that it’s 15% and we have to increase our sales, increase our price maybe, and also decrease our expenses in order to counterbalance the increased cost of goods.”
That calculation has forced Interparfums to rethink spending internally. Advertising remains off-limits for cuts, though. “That would have an impact on sales,” as Madar put it, but the company is looking for savings elsewhere. It is rolling out new systems and AI tools to streamline operations and moving its New Jersey distribution and warehouse center to a third-party logistics group to improve efficiency.
The company is also streamlining its French corporate structure and plans to merge a non-operating holding subsidiary into Interparfums SA in December 2025, with no material impact on its roughly 72% ownership of the unit.
At the same time, external competition is intensifying. A surge of independent fragrance houses has flooded the category in recent years, raising the bar for consumer attention and taste. Interparfums plans to play in that arena rather than shy away from it—even as growth will continue to be led by its biggest licenses: Montblanc, Coach, Jimmy Choo, DKNY, and Lacoste.
“The space is competitive and we have to fight for space, and we’re seeing better results in the e-commerce part of the business,” Madar said, pointing to the online channels of specialty beauty retailers Sephora and Ulta Beauty as well as Macys.com.
The holiday season appears poised to test the continued shift in consumers’ shopping preferences and openness to buy fragrance online. Orders from e-commerce partners have been hitting record levels as Thanksgiving approaches.
“Everybody is building up inventory—I think I’m quite optimistic for the holiday season,” he said. “There’s a lot of offering, but there’s also a lot of interest from the consumer, so we are looking at Christmas with optimism.”
That strength online has been stronger than the company expected and has helped cushion the slowdown in classic brick-and-mortar retail, Madar added. And for him, the shift in how consumers are willing to shop for such a sensorial category remains nothing short of astonishing—the biggest turning point he has witnessed in the fragrance world.
“The change in the business has been enormous since the 1980s,” Madar said. “I never thought that you could buy a fragrance without smelling it.”
What once would have been unthinkable—choosing a perfume without trying it—has now become a frequent purchasing behavior, driven by emotional connection rather than physical sampling. “This goes against everything” Interparfums has done for the past four decades, Madar continued, yet it shows how central storytelling has become in beauty—and how willing consumers are to buy if they feel aligned with a brand’s narrative.
“We have been spending millions of dollars putting beauty advisors behind the counter, and placing millions and millions of samples into customers’ hands in order for them to try and hope that they will come back to you. And now you have Amazon Beauty [where Interparfums sells most of its brands in the US] and TikTok and the consumer buys the perfume as we describe what the fragrance is made of, the ingredients…”
What’s crucial is that those new digital points of sale are not cannibalizing Interparfums’ business, but amplifying it. “When we have peaks on TikTok and peaks on Amazon, our sellout at retail goes up,” Madar said.
Yet for all the momentum online, Interparfums’ next phase of growth is not limited to e-commerce. The company is now directing its energy toward the niche segment and M&A, preparing for a stronger performance in 2027 and anticipating that macroeconomic pressures will moderate by late 2026.
The company currently holds more than 20 licenses and one owned brand: Goutal, the niche French perfume house it acquired in March from Amorepacific Europe, which will stop developing the brand—and its license—from 2026 onward. Goutal fragrances have historically generated between €10 million ($11.6 million) and €12 million ($13.9 million), according to an Interparfums press release at the time of the acquisition.
“Niche fragrances have a smaller base than commercial fragrances, but I think it’s important for Interparfums to be present in this category,” Madar said. “The growth will come from existing brands and adding new brands.”
The industry has been racing to acquire fragrance labels over the past three years—a push to gain market share and offset slower growth, with high-profile deals like Kering and L’Oréal’s €4 billion ($4.63 billion) agreement setting the tone. Interparfums plans to keep pace. “I don’t expect this trend to stop,” Madar said.
Interparfums is pursuing both new licenses and full brand acquisitions.
The company is courting fashion houses that don’t yet have a fragrance line and should— as it did with Tapestry’s Coach—as well as brands that already have a fragrance partner but are seeking a better fit, as when DKNY switched from Estée Lauder to Interparfums in 2022. “These deals don’t always come from disappointment—sometimes the parties simply decide it’s not for them anymore, and for good reasons,” Madar said.
Its strategy comes as the current M&A landscape favors sellers. “It’s a seller’s market, for sure. For a lot of brands, it’s a seller’s market,” he said. “There is a lot of interest from strategic players. There is a lot of interest from private equity. There is a lot of interest from too many people. And the valuations are higher too. I think that if you have a business that is growing fast, it’s worth a lot of money on the street. Everybody is paying for growth.”
No matter how active Interparfums becomes in dealmaking, it will remain a pure fragrance player instead of a diversified beauty conglomerate.
Before branching into new categories, Madar believes brands need to recognize their limits and respect what consumers expect them to be.
“Some brands can do makeup, skincare, and fragrance, and some shouldn’t even try,” Madar said. “I think the consumer understands quite well the strengths of each brand. And I think that if you try to fool them… they know very well that this is not your expertise. If skincare is not your expertise, you don’t have the legitimacy to do skincare because you don’t have research and development.”
Then he distilled it to its essence: “Today I think it’s important to be real and to stay very focused.”
