The objects we surround ourselves with, or find ourselves surrounded by, can either be a source of pain (think unopened bills and jury summons) or pleasure (a beautiful design object). In the case of Officine Universelle Buly 1803, it’s about celebrating that delightful side to the umpteenth degree.
Made with internationally sourced ingredients including Australian emu oil and Moroccan poppy powder, the offerings include water-based perfumes, boar’s hair toothbrushes, and handmade boxwood hair combs from Japan. Formulas are created free of phenoxyethanol, parabens, and silicone, housed in 18th century style wooden display units. Whether its weighty, opaque white bottles with hefty golden, engraved bottle tops and intricate illustrations or a marble and metal fragrant lantern to diffuse candle scents through light rather than fire, Buly offers creations for the design connoisseur.
Its inspirations take on less conventional forms like ceramic pencils infused with perfume, garden vegetable-inspired water perfumes, and sculptural metallic boxes for home scent diffusion. Customized packing and products with design choices, calligraphy, engravings, and embossings make up another tenant of its DNA. There are 276 different monograms to engrave on soap bars for example, while when it comes to gift wrapping, Buly’s head wrappers were trained in the Japanese art of origata, which encompasses 3,600 different folds. Creative partnerships include traveler’s kits with velvet interiors and gold stitched lettering offered for passengers aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express and a collection of eight fragrances inspired by artworks hanging in the Louvre, launched in 2022.
Breathing Life into an Historical BrandThe world of Buly was originally created by perfumer Jean-Vincent Bully in 1803, known for creations such as the Aromatic and Antimephitic Vinegar. He also was the source of inspiration for the protagonist in Honoré de Balzac’s novel, Rise and Fall of César Birotteau. Bully's work provided the perfect creative canvas for artistic director and designer Ramdane Touhami (former Menswear Director at Liberty London) and beauty historian Victoire de Taillac-Touhami (previously Director of Public Relations for Colette).
The couple is no stranger to reinvention. They brought their design prowess to opening the niche cosmetics and perfumery store Parfumerie Générale in 2002. They rebranded and relaunched the historical French home fragrance brand Trudon in 2006, before setting their sites on Officine Universelle Buly 1803.
When asked what compelled her to breathe new life into Buly, co-founder Victoire de Taillac-Touhami points to the 19th century aesthetics of the brand’s catalogue. “It was exactly what we would love to have in our bathroom. We loved the name of the product, the design, the labels. It was a starting point of reflection. Maybe we could revamp the brand and open a first new store in Paris, but it was really as much about the aesthetics as about the semantics, the words, the name of the product. We thought it was very charming,” she says.
In terms of modernizing said offerings for the 21st century, de Taillac-Touhami notes, “The history of the brand or archive, it’s a frame. What we really wanted to do, which was the most obvious, is open a dedicated store for beauty and perfumes that would cater to all Jean-Vincent Bully kind of products. What was very interesting is you had, from the beginning, as many creams and perfumes as you had toothpaste. We love the idea of a beauty emporium,” de Taillac-Touhami explains. “What is special about the way that we work, Ramdane always says ‘It's one foot in the past, one foot in the future.’ Of course the past of the brand and the traditional apothecary are an inspiration. But when we create products, we are very creative and love innovation; maybe that's the contrast that the Buly customer loves.”
The first store opened on 6 rue Bonaparte in Paris's 6th arrondissement in 2014. Three years later, they opened up another boutique in Tokyo, followed by one in Milan in April 2022. In the last decade, Buly's product assortment has grown from 20 oils and 20 accessories to 55 oils and 400 accessories (such as 120 combs, including customizable options for cats and dogs). The co-founders even turned their creative approaches into print publications with the release of the 2017 encyclopedia An Atlas of Natural Beauty and The Beauty of Time Travel. “When you’re dedicated to how you can take care of yourself and preserve traditional beauty rituals, that's a way that you find new products or suppliers. For example, the ceramic pencil, which was Ramdane’s idea, it's a very poetic product; a pencil, which you can't use to write, but you use to perfume your office. It is very nice and very funny in the same way,” de Taillac-Touhami adds.
The Business of Being Buly
The company’s luxurious offerings soon caught the attention of LVMH, which invested in the brand through its Luxury Ventures fund in October 2017 before acquiring the company in October 2021. Buly’s acquisition was the first time a brand supported by its fund was later acquired. Following the acquisition, Touhami is still the brand’s Artist Director but stepped down as CEO. De Taillac still operates as Buly’s Director of Product Strategy, Image, and Communication, while Anne-Véronique Bruel (former Fresh CEO and President Sephora Asia) acted as CEO until she was succeeded by Nathalie Elbaz in October 2023, following Elbaz’s two decades of experience in luxury beauty through managing roles at Guerlain and Lancôme.
In 2024, the brand recorded a sales growth of almost +25%, which they expect to exceed in 2025. The company has over 59 boutiques and 900 beauty products, undoubtedly adding to LVMH’s 671 million euros in reported revenue for 2024.
Today the brand’s biggest markets are Japan and France with the Huile Antique body oils (a dry oil with sesame, coconut, and apricot oil) and Baume des Muses customizable lip balms (made with shea butter, plum kernel oil, and castor oil presented in a rectangular shape with beveled edges modeled after early 20th-century rouge cases) as the brand’s bestsellers. The US market is a huge channel for Buly’s e-commerce business, constituting 30% to 40% of the brand’s customers according to WWD.
When asked about the key to marketing such a history- and nostalgia-based brand in such a digital world, Elbaz replies, “Do things with authenticity: make it real to look real. Everything we do is driven by this quest for authenticity, by the art of conversation, elegance, attentive and refined service, and, of course, generosity. These are values that stand the test of time and that our customers are looking for, as a counterpoint to a world that is sometimes too high-tech.” Elbaz notes that the online experience is crafted as closely as possible to the in-store equivalent in visuals, product descriptions, tone, and image. An audio feature explaining the stories behind the products was recently added to make the experience even more immersive, while a Skin Concierge service offers consultations for the e-commerce shopper.
Details and Delight-Focused: Buly’s In-Store Experience
Few companies have put such a heavy emphasis on the branded physical experience from the get-go as Buly has. Deciding on a new location may be an easy method of finding the sidewalk with the heaviest footfall, but the Buly team also isn’t afraid to go for more unconventional choices.
“Of course, we pay a great deal of attention to the choice of locations for our new shops. That's the golden rule of retail. But we're not always where you'd expect us to be,” Elbaz remarks, “For instance, we had to dare to open our first shop in 2014 on rue Bonaparte in Paris, in a section of the street with no other shops and very little natural traffic. Ten years later, it's still our global flagship and has become a place of pilgrimage for many tourists, with long queues in front of our boutique.”
At the onset of each new store project, Ramdane visits the site to give his retail and design input. The design elements can be regional or historical, like its Milan store having Milanese code in the ceilings, lacquered wood referencing Riva luxury boats, and Latin product nameplates, or historical, like its Galaxy Macau counter being inspired by an old Portuguese building. Visual contrasts are another key element, like its Aoyama Kotto-Dori store that juxtaposes a glass laboratory with a red brick wall interior. The Daikanyama store is cut into two visual elements: one side is an old apothecary counter and another a blend of modern-style Japanese concrete, plants, and transparent resins.
Even in department stores, the brand is managing to craft its own standalone experience. When Buly opened a concession on the ground floor of Selfridges in London in 2017, it did so with a luxurious mahogany wood and glass counter offering the same standalone experiences as engraving and calligraphy.
“Each store is a blank canvas that he sees and would make into a creation. There is always code [decorations] and a counter, but there are different kinds of materials and displays each time. It’s never the same,” de Taillac-Touhami says. “We always do stores [to last] forever. We are not a pop-up brand. When we build things, we pick out the most beautiful materials. We create a place where we expect the customer to have an aesthetic shock or wow moment when they step in, where they enjoy the beauty of the store. Now the internet is so convenient that you really want a customer who comes into the store to enjoy the decor and be more curious about the brand and the product if they like the point of view. That's a dream because the conversation is starting in the best way.”
It’s not just the design elements, but also putting an emphasis on artisanal craftsmanship and a personalized shopping experience that keeps customers coming back. “Buly is this perfect universe with its own code and way to do everything. We always knew it was about the details, about taking time in-store, and putting the product inside the box in front of the customer. We thought all these kinds of gestures were a way to have a nice conversation with the customer to stop time. All of this was from day one. We didn't change the way we work because we are in a department store. The uniforms, opera music, the engraving of the combs and lip balms. But it was also a lot about services and how you can have people do things in-store like calligraphy, wrapping, embossing, and engraving. We love that our team is so gifted and talented,” de Taillac-Touhami enthuses.
Even for those managing the company, the office spaces (Buly's ateliers in Paris and Japan) are set up in the same glory and splendor of its storefronts. “For me, it’s very important that people in the headquarters see Buly products everywhere, the orders, and the energy. Being in an office with very strong aesthetics, it helps you to understand the brand and what we are trying to do. The front and back offices for a brand should be the same standard. People working with you, they have to feel the brand,” de Taillac-Touhami adds.
As for the brand’s future brick-and-mortar strategy, de Taillac-Touhami says its founding team will keep the same path moving forward. “It's a slow and steady growth. We really believe in the future of the store. We think that stores bring so much to city life,” she says. “When you have a nice store, you know, it's a pleasure to walk by even if you're not a customer. When I see orders going all over the world and people who are so different from me enjoying what we are doing, it's so rewarding. We often have queues outside of our Parisian store, and when you see the diversity of customers in front of the store, it's such a gift.”
Expanding The Buly Business
Buly’s co-founders are passionate about keeping the identity of their brand cohesive and intact across all touchpoints. Buly will be opening three new shops in Paris this year to accommodate its growing customer base, with new stores planned in Europe and Asia over the coming years.
“You keep the impact being what you are. For us, we know exactly what is Buly, we are not trying to do other things. We never look at what other brands are doing,” de Taillac-Touhami says. “We are also very lucky to have a strong core of people we have had with us for many years, understanding the brand exactly like Ramdane and I. That's also how you can grow, because it's those people who carry your brand and your vision,” she adds.
Since joining LVMH three years ago and scaling the brand (de Taillac-Touhami estimates that 46 employees now work at Buly HQ, with 20 of those arriving in the last year alone), it’s also changed the brand’s onboarding strategy. “Before, as soon as people were joining us because we were all working together very closely, it was quite an organic process. Since we joined, we've been thinking a lot about what is specific and singular about Buly and explaining it to LVMH corporate teams. It's easy to do small and beautiful, but to do big and beautiful, it needs a lot of dedication,” she says.
Speaking on building a team that internalizes the brand DNA and attention to detail, Elbaz states, “We're lucky to have our founders Victoire and Ramdane with us; working under their watchful eye teaches us. Everyone who joins Officine Universelle Buly, whatever their profession, has a sales experience in our boutiques; it's the best ‘university’ for understanding and integrating our brand codes.”
As those brand codes reach wider and farther audiences, the aesthetic incarnations of Buly will only continue to grow, with design enthusiasts across the globe awaiting with bated breath for the next creations from the minds inside its creative universe.
