Burberry appoints Coty as its fragrance licensee

British luxury brand Burberry has said it will license its fragrances and cosmetics to Coty in a deal totalling $225m (€211m) that will help it develop new products and benefit from the US group's distribution. Known for its British-made trench coats, Burberry's beauty range is led by fragrances My Burberry and Mr Burberry, and includes cosmetics to help introduce its brand to new consumers. The company, which brought the perfume business in house in 2013, said it would retain creative control while Coty, which counts Gucci, Hugo Boss and Calvin Klein in its portfolio, will bring its global distribution network to the table. Last month Coty announced its plant in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, will close by the end of 2018 with the loss of around 200 jobs. The company said then it had carried out a detailed study of its global manufacturing and is to consolidate its cosmetics operations resulting in the closure of the plant. On the Burberry licensing deal, Coty Chief Financial Officer Julie Brown said Burberry had repositioned the business by cutting secondary-channel sales, and it was now the time to partner the premium fragrance leader. "Coty has very broad experience of working closely with other luxury brands," she said in an interview. "We will benefit from their deep beauty industry expertise and also their first-class distribution." Coty will pay £130m (€152m) for the long-term licence, plus about £50m for inventory and other assets, Burberry said. It will also pay royalties from October. Beauty contributed 7% of Burberry's revenue in the first half of its 2016/17 financial year, down 17% on the prior period, partly as a result of the repositioning. It launched men's fragrance Mr Burberry a year ago and young British model Iris Law has promoted its cosmetics. Chief Operating Officer John Smith said there was an opportunity to grow cosmetics sales, which currently account for about 8% of beauty sales against an industry average of a third. "Make-up is a key recruitment tool for a luxury brand, inthat the price points are a lot lower than any other product,"he said. "As a means of recruiting people into the brand, it'sperfect." Analysts at Exane BNP Paribas said they welcomed the choice of a first-class partner to appropriately develop the business. "In fact, we never liked the idea of Burberry managing its beauty business directly, as beauty is an FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) business where you win on the back of global reach," they said. Burberry said the deal would be broadly neutral to adjusted profit before tax in 2017/18 and accretive the following year.