PARIS — There’s a changing of the guard at the top of niche fragrance brands Parfums de Marly and Initio Parfums Privés.
Julien Sausset — who has served as their chief executive officer for the past decade and built the brands into some of the buzziest and most successful around — is stepping down. He will be succeeded by Patrice Béliard starting Oct. 1.
Béliard has for 25 years worked in large corporations, such as Shiseido and the Estée Lauder Cos., where he most recently served as global president of Kilian Paris, Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, Darphin Paris and Lab Series.
“It’s a virtuous and natural succession plan at the moment when the company has grown so fast and so big that we had to make a couple of changes,” said Sausset, who joined Parfums de Marly and Initio’s parent company when the business was tiny.
During the past five years, retail sales of the two brands combined have multiplied by 10 and are expected to surpass $900 million at the close of their current fiscal year, which ends March 2026.
Concurrently, as the niche fragrance sector has expanded exponentially to become the most buoyant category in the beauty industry, Parfums de Marly and Initio have made a huge mark. They caught the eye of investors, and in June 2023, Advent International acquired a majority stake in the brands in a deal valued by industry sources at more than $700 million.
“It’s been a fantastic journey, working along with Julien Sprecher at Parfums de Marly and the rest of the team at Initio, both in Dubai and Paris,” said Sausset, referring to the executive who launched Marly and Initio’s parent, the Sprecher Berrier Group of Companies, then served as SBGC chairman and creative director of Parfums de Marly.
Castley from Parfums de Marly
Courtesy
Sausset has enjoyed the entrepreneurial phase of development and brand-building. “It takes five to 10 years to build a brand, and that’s what we’ve done,” he said. “We’re very proud of that.”
Sausset explained he’s “more of a man of 1 to 100 than a man of 100 to 1,000. I felt the timing was right for me to move on and do other things that are closer to what I do best, which is creating an impact and helping brands to grow, helping smaller teams to grow fast and capture strategic opportunities, rather than driving a bigger business and acting at consolidation and structural levels.”
So Sausset, Sprecher and Advent looked for a new CEO.
“We ended up meeting Patrice, who is the expert in bringing niche brands from the ground up, having operated in a big group,” Sausset said. “It felt just right to have him taking over at that point. It’s a very smooth and joint decision with Advent and Julien Sprecher.”
Sausset is inclined to look at other entrepreneurial experiences — not necessarily as a company executive, but more as someone who can help, recommend and strategize. That could be in the beauty industry or otherwise.
Béliard explained his life is always about encounters. “It was time for me to have a new challenge,” he said. “Then it becomes ‘what’?”
His meeting with Advent, Sausset and Sprecher helped inform that. “It really became a natural fit from a human standpoint,” said Béliard, adding having been in the luxury industry for so long, Parfums de Marly and Initio were two players very much on his radar.
“Then when you start digging and understanding the brands, the essence, the whys, everything has been so well-constructed and built that it really felt very natural as the next chapter,” he continued. “It was like a perfect match for me.”
Béliard sees the brands as having tremendous opportunities.
“The way that Initio and Parfums de Marly have been able to break through the clutter in a world where you have more and more players is a very unique asset and quality,” Béliard said.
There are two great opportunities for growth for the brands, according to Sausset. The first is direct-to-consumer retail, both online and through new stores. By year-end, boutique openings are expected for Parfums de Marly in London, Shanghai, Las Vegas and Kuwait, for instance.
There are geographic opportunities, too, such as Asia. Parfums de Marly and Initio are not yet in Japan, and China represents a small business today.
“These are regions that Patrice has been dealing with a lot in his career,” Sausset said.
Currently, the Americas generate 45 percent of the brands’ retail sales; Europe, 28 percent; the Middle East and Africa, 14 percent, and Asia, 13 percent.