Puig, the discreet family of a thousand fragrances

There are flowers with a scent that's almost impossible to escape. And this story of a thousand fragrances begins with one of them, the jasmine that gave its name to the street in Vilassar de Dalt where Antonio Puig Castelló was born on October 19, 1889. His father, Simón, was a farmer who had done well selling potatoes in the United Kingdom and had been able to move to London. From the British capital, he returned with various products to import, among them perfumes from the French firm D'Orsay. From that moment on, despite episodes such as the defection of his first business partner in America with his secretary or the sinking of a ship loaded with his products by a German submarine, his surname has remained inextricably linked to aromas. Puig is today a company with more than 4.3 billion euros in annual sales, selling its products to more than 150 countries and hiding behind such globally recognized brands as Paco Rabanne, Carolina Herrera, Jean Paul Gaultier, Nina Ricci or Charlotte Tilbury.

The Catalan fragrance giant has existed as a company for 110 years. The Milady lipstick, the first manufactured in Spain, which Puig launched in 1922, seems a distant memory. That same year, Antonio married Julia Planas, the daughter of a textile businessman who sold his thread business to Fabra&Coats. From this marriage came Antoni, Marian, Josep Maria, and Enrique, the second generation that would continue the business.

But before that transition, Spain still had to endure a Civil War—during which the company was collectivized and Puig remained an employee—and a post-conflict period in which import restrictions forced them to create their first in-house perfume. Essential oils extracted from local products had to be used, so lavender, bergamot, and rosemary ended up in the formula of Agua Lavanda de Puig, the cologne that Antonio Puig developed with a French perfumer.

This gradual construction of a large multinational also involved moving to a new factory on Travessera de Gràcia in Barcelona, ​​where Puig was very clear that he wanted a lobby reminiscent of Parisian mansions, with an imposing staircase leading to the upper floor. "We secured the distribution rights for many new products thanks to that scale. After seeing it, people looked at you differently. You didn't need any more business cards," explained the late Josep Maria Puig in the book the company commissioned in 2014 to commemorate its first 100 years. Antonio Puig always repeated the same lesson to his four children. "There are five stages in life," he would say. "The first is learning to do; the second, doing; the third, truly doing; the fourth, teaching how to do; and the last, letting others do." The founder of the fragrance group was very clear about how he wanted this succession process to unfold, which required his children to be trained. Antoni and Marian studied industrial and chemical engineering, respectively, and after stints in France and Switzerland, they joined the family business. Josep Maria, on the other hand, would take charge of other businesses, such as the metal products company his father had founded with his cousin to produce lipstick containers, which would later become... Flamagas, the manufacturer of the iconic Clipper lighterThe youngest, Enrique, dedicated himself to the group's public relations and was also the family's connection, through his passion for sailing, to the Spanish Royal Household. "They had the work divided up. In many Catalan family businesses, this has always been the problem: when sons-in-law came along with ideas and wanted to participate in the business. This never happened at Puig," explains Francesc Cabana, the great historian of the Catalan company.

"Take care of your mother, stay united because this unity will be your strength, stick together." These were the last words of Antonio Puig, who, after a very gradual succession process, left the company in the hands of his four children when it wasn't even the leader in the Spanish perfume market. At that time, that position was held by Myrurgia, owned by another Barcelona family, the Monegals, but which years later would end up being absorbed by the protagonists of this story. The Puig heirs invested heavily in design—hiring André Ricard, the creator of their most iconic bottles—and marketing, at a time when Spain lagged behind in both fields. "Marian opened the company to internationalization. She was a very prudent and enterprising person, capable of packing a suitcase and going to the United States to pursue any business that interested her," explains an executive who knew her personally.

The story of how Puig began to grow on the other side of the Atlantic is also worth telling. On October 6, 1959, a letter bearing the seal of Iowa State University was sent to the fragrance group's offices on Travessera de Gràcia. It was from Fernando Aleu, a young Catalan medical resident who declared himself a fan of Puig's Agua Lavanda cologne and lamented not being able to buy it in the United States. He proposed that the family import "a small quantity" of the cologne to distribute among other American university students and inquired about the cost of receiving about fifty small bottles. "It's possible that this foray of mine into the business world will end in nothing, but it's also possible that it will turn out to be a good deal," Aleu warned. The "foray" went well, and he traded medicine for business, becoming Puig's representative in the American subsidiary.

In his memoirs, titled Before my memory fails me —quite an exception in a family known for its discretion— Marian Puig recounted another trip that also encapsulates his efforts to expand his business outside of Spain, back when it wasn't such an easy task. The businessman had taken notice of Max Factor, the makeup artist of silent film Hollywood and founder of a company whose name his children continued. Among his products was Pancake, a foundation that at the time entered Spain through smuggling via Tangier. Marian Puig thought the Americans would need a reliable distributor and wrote a letter to Max Factor's headquarters to convince them to trust him as a partner in Spain. The response was a firm no, which Marian Puig didn't let deter him. He traveled to California with his wife, Maria, and ultimately won over the Factors. "Max Factor was like a business school for Puig. We learned technically and professionally, as they deployed chemists and specialists in both product development and marketing and sales. This helped us to train our people with a cutting-edge business culture," recalled Marian Puig in a compilation of her experiences.

But to compete internationally in the fragrance market, the Catalan company also needed to gain a foothold in France, and in the midst of the dictatorship, it was easier to do so with a non-Spanish name. Their strategy was to partner with a Basque man who had Gallicized his name. Paco Rabanne was born in San Sebastián as Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo, but went into exile as a child with his family because his father had been a Republican general executed during the Spanish Civil War. While the barricades of May '68 burned in Paris, the Puig family signed a contract with the designer, who sketched the design of his first perfume, Calandre—inspired by the United Nations building in New York—on a restaurant paper tablecloth. After Rabanne, Venezuelan designer Carolina Herrera joined the Catalans after negotiations with Revlon fell through, and in 1998, the French brand Nina Ricci also joined the partnership. Little by little, Puig went on to control not only the scents that were sold with the image of these brands, but also their fashion collections.

The late 1990s also marked the beginning of the third generation's involvement in the business. "They had the foresight to hire a professor to develop a very well-crafted family protocol, back when no one else was doing so, to clearly define roles and how family members would be integrated into the business," recalls a businessman in the fashion industry who has worked with the Puig family throughout his career. Today, the only ones holding positions of responsibility in the company are Marc Puig (Marian's son and current president) and Manuel Puig (Antoni's only son, the largest individual shareholder and vice president of the group), but there are a total of 14 cousins ​​across the different branches. Therefore, the succession strategy had to be different from the one followed with the four Puig siblings.

The protocol stipulated, for example, that there would always be more non-family members than family members on the boards of their companies. "There was a very professional and appropriate board. Neither the family nor outsiders had complete control. The company kept everyone informed of its activities, and there were no surprises," recalls IESE professor Pedro Nueno, who served on the company's board between 2004 and 2016. Josep de Oliu, then president of Banco Sabadell, was the one who appointed Marc Puig as executive chairman.

The turn of the millennium coincided with a turbulent period for the company, but this obstacle also spurred a series of decisions that explain why the company has now achieved three consecutive years of record results. The group discontinued some projects and concentrated on the segment prestigewith more sophisticated fragrances that could be sold in nearly 20,000 points of sale such as department stores or the duty-free from airports. These perfumes could be launched on the market through licensing agreements or under their own brands, although Puig has increasingly opted for the latter with an ambitious acquisition policy. This has benefited the company, especially in recent years when many haute couture houses have sought to regain control of the fragrances and makeup they had previously outsourced.

With Marc Puig now at the helm, the company also opened up the niche category, then still relatively untapped, encompassing the most select perfumes with more concentrated formulations and a higher price range that the sector had not yet fully explored. In 2015, the Catalan company acquired Penhaligon's and Artisan Parfumeur, to which it has since added Dries Van Noten.The Belgian designer actually retired this week.– or Byredo. Beyond perfumes and fashion, in recent years Puig has diversified its business into makeup – in 2021 they closed the historic purchase of the British brand Charlotte Tilbury – and dermocosmetics, a booming industryIt's a boom where there's still room to grow. "The two of them [Marc and Manuel Puig] quickly managed to turn the company around and get it moving at a good pace. The company has come a long way, has experienced extraordinary growth, and doesn't have the debt of other companies," Nueno points out.

Regarding the immediate future of this giant, we know that the markets assume it will be the protagonist of one of the year's biggest IPOs in Spain, although its president has only publicly stated that they are considering this option. Furthermore, he made it clear that the fourth generation will not be part of the company's management team, but they will be able to remain connected to it as shareholders represented on the board of directors. "They have been a European benchmark for this different vision of legacy. They weren't focused on the bottom line, but on growing the legacy and passing it on," explains Jaume Alsina, president of the Catalan Association of Family Businesses. In fact, Marian Puig was one of the founding members of the Institute for Family Business, which is now chaired by his son Marc. And so, 110 years after its founding, Puig is preparing its new life as a publicly traded company with management no longer bearing the family name.