By 1914, Barcelona had become a thriving industrial and cultural centre. Catalan entrepreneurs had carved out some of Europe’s most successful businesses in sectors like textile and banking, while Barcelona’s architects and artists were making creative inroads through a movement that came to be known as Modernisme. As the first automobiles drove down the Paseo de Gracia, past Gaudí’s recently finished Casa Batlló, Antonio Puig Castelló founded a company dedicated to the importation of French perfumes into the Spanish market. Puig’s business was an instant success.
The Catalan middle classes, who traditionally looked to France for all things elegant, had become increasingly hungry for the latest fashions, and social changes were giving women more freedom to consume and to express themselves through the use of modern ‘beauty products’. Then, Antonio Puig had a great idea: why not begin manufacturing himself? The result, in 1922, was the launch of Milady, Spain’s first-ever lipstick.
Antoni Puig was a pioneer in the perfume industry, applying mass production processes to beauty products and taking advantage of new breakthroughs in advertising to open up new markets and reach new consumers. His company grew, and now, more than 90 years later, Puig S.A has become one of the world’s top manufacturers of fragrance and beauty products with a turnover of €848,9 Million in 2006, a wide portfolio of international perfume brands and over 4,500 products exported to more than 120 countries worldwide.
Puig’s success has been built upon the twin pillars of product innovation and business expansion. By keeping a tight control on manufacturing processes at their main facilities just outside Barcelona and using an in-house R&D team, Puig has consistently provided products that have responded to current market trends, both in terms of content and design. In business terms, Puig has been a consistent innovator. Realising quickly the opportunities for growth, Puig was one of the first Spanish companies to expand internationally, opening its New York headquarters in 1959.
The company now has offices in 23 countries around the globe. The growth of Puig has been driven by an ambitious expansion policy: in the 1990s, the company became majority shareholders in their two most direct competitors Perfumería Gal and Myrurgia, assuming an unchallenged leadership position in the Spanish market.
Yet, despite becoming a company with a global presence, Puig has always been run as a family affair. Unlike other successful Spanish companies, Antonio Puig’s heirs have resisted the urge to sell to the highest bidder and have kept control of the business in the hands of the founder’s family. His children Antonio, Mariano, José María and Enrique, took over the family business and drove its expansion throughout the 20th century, and now the company is in the hands of Antonio’s grandsons Marc and Manuel Puig.
Part of Puig’s success lies in the continuity of its corporate culture and its respect for the family traditions as perfumers. However, while other family-run companies have not managed to keep up with globalisation, Puig has evolved into a very different entity to the one that was founded at the beginning of the last century. Over recent years, Puig has adopted a modern corporate structure, establishing a holding company and diversifying its business into three separate divisions—Puig Prestige, Puig Fashion and Puig Beauty—all dedicated to leveraging targeted brands within different market segments.
The importance of establishing strong brands has been a historical aspect of Puig’s success. In 1940, Antoni Puig created his first emblematic brand: Agua Lavanda Puig. At the time, Spain was suffering from a post-war depression and under General Franco the country had become isolated from the rest of Europe. Antonio Puig selected his raw materials locally, using rosemary, lavender and lemon from Spain to create a classic eau de toilette that set the benchmark for all similar products to come.
Antonio Puig understood the importance of the new arts of advertising, marketing and industrial design and in the 1950s, the company collaborated with artists to create an image that was ahead of its time. Before the war, Puig had been one of the first company’s to incorporate its own publicity department within the company, exploiting the pioneering uses of modern advertising techniques that took advantage of the renowned talents of Barcelona’s artists and designers.
After establishing its own successful brands in the marketplace, Puig spotted the importance of the synergies within fashion and fragrances by licensing some of the world’s most important fashion brands to create new families of products that have given the company a truly international presence. In 1968, Puig began working with the designer Paco Rabanne, using his eponymous brand to create a family of fragrances that continue to sell well today.
They followed the same strategy with other fashion brands, like Carolina Herrera, Nina Ricci and Prada, with whom they established a joint venture that has seen the release of a number of fragrances under the Italian designer’s legendary brand. By leveraging the possibilities of fashion brands within the perfume market and applying their expertise to the production and marketing of those products, Puig has managed to establish a wide portfolio of global fragrance families that have provided consistently solid results for the company.
Other brands within the Puig portfolio include Antonio Banderas, Adolfo Domínguez, Victorio & Lucchino, Mango, Agatha Ruíz de la Prada, Massimo Dutti, Springfield, Zara, Agua Brava, Pachá, Denenes, Vitesse, Lactovit, Heno de Pravia and Maja. For 2009, Puig has announced that it will be undertaking a new fragrance project using the image of the Latin superstar, Shakira.
Puig is undoubtedly one of Spain’s business success stories, a unique company with a unique history that has managed to maintain both independence and consistent growth for over 90 years. However, the company now faces a challenging business environment if it is to maintain its success in the future. The continuing strength of the Euro, the shift in consumer tendencies towards electronic consumer products and the recent economic downturn mean that Puig will need to keep looking for new ways to streamline their business and maintain growth in the future. In order to meet these challenges in the 21st century, Puig will need to keep alive the innovative spirit and the vision that first drove Antonio Puig to establish the company back in the Barcelona of 1914.
