In 2023, the luxury powerhouse Kering was only in its first year of launching its in-house beauty venture. But by June, the newly-formed Kering Beauté had already made a splashy acquisition — and in beauty’s hottest category, no less: The company acquired the British niche fragrance house Creed to the tune of $3.8 billion.
Just over two years later, Kering sold off its beauty portfolio — including not only Creed, but also the perfume lines of Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga — to L’Oréal for $4.6 billion. But with such a quick turnaround, was Creed really worth what Kering paid for it?
“With Creed, there is no storytelling,” said Johanna Monange, founder of bespoke perfume house Maison 21G and former creative director for International Flavors and Fragrances. “I don’t think [L’Oréal] will transform Creed. They will just keep cashing in. I would be more interested to see what they’re going to do with Balenciaga, for instance, or Gucci.”
Speaking on L’Oréal’s Q3 earnings call, CEO Nicolas Hieronimus called Creed a “top three” brand in the niche world but declined to share how much of the Kering Beauté valuation was dedicated to Creed. But while the brand has a cash cow in 2010’s hit fragrance Aventus, fragrance experts have questioned its sky-high valuation.
A billion-dollar deal
A 2019 Business of Fashion article described Creed as the “Supreme” of the fragrance world. Akin to avid sneaker collectors, fragheads have dedicated numerous posts on forums like Reddit and Basenotes to dissecting the differences between various batch numbers of Aventus. Since its 2010 launch, the scent has inspired a series of flankers like Absolu Aventus and Aventus for Her.
In 2020, the private equity group BlackRock acquired a majority stake in Creed and grew the brand to roughly $290 million in annual sales. Selling it to Kering a few years later for more than $3 billion may have been a good deal for BlackRock, but a misstep for Kering, Monange said.
“When the acquisition appeared, we were like, ‘They’re so stupid. How can you be at the head of a company like that and make such a huge mistake? [Creed] was overpaid,” said Monange. “But it’s a good deal for L’Oréal. Creed is super profitable. It’s distributed everywhere. But how long is it gonna last? Because they have one reference, which is Aventus. … They need to revamp the pipe, because with one fragrance, you’re very fragile.”
While Kering brought in a major name in Creed, building a beauty sector to support it took more than the group could muster, she added.
“To have the vision, the merchandising team, the training team, the supply chain, the logistics — it’s super difficult. It’s a savoir faire that Kering thought would be easy: You just buy a nice brand,” she said. “But, no, it’s not. It’s really difficult, and in the power of negotiation for the best spot, it’s very complicated. And I think L’Oréal is doing well there. They are not so good at creating brands, but they are good at developing brands.” Kering did not reply to a request for comment.
A secret history
The fascination with Creed came well before BlackRock or Kering took an interest in the brand. A 1999 New York Times article on the brand described “playboy-aristocrat” Olivier Creed as the house’s perfumer and cited Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana as among his clientele.
However, Creed’s history, including its royal pedigree and Olivier’s credentials as a nose, has been called into question by perfume industry insiders. “I have in my files a photocopy of a cease-and-desist letter written by the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles III, demanding Creed stop claiming that they supplied him with fragrance,” wrote perfumer writer Luca Turin in a September post to his Substack.
“There’s absolutely no fragrance heritage [to Creed],” said Gabe Oppenheim, author of “The Ghost Perfumer: Creed, Lies, & the Scent of the Century,” which delves into the backstory of the perfume house. “It’s all lies, but it’s the kind of marketing that took on a life of its own.”
While Creed’s logo includes the date “1760,” and its history on its website traces its lineage back more than 200 years, Oppenheim said the brand’s olfactive history has been largely fabricated.
“Olivier Creed claimed he was a master perfumer. That’s fraudulent,” said Oppenheim. “He was a master artistic director.”
According to Oppenheim’s book, published in 2021, Olivier Creed, born to a long lineage of British tailors, first began experimenting with fragrances in the 1960s. Creed’s first hit fragrance, 1985’s Green Irish Tweed, was created not by Olivier Creed as the brand had claimed, but from a rejected formula that perfumer Pierre Bourdon initially created for Lancôme’s Sagamore fragrance. Oppenheim said Bourdon acted as an uncredited and unpaid perfumer for Creed, and that the brand’s subsequent hits, Aventus and Royal Oud, came from Bourdon’s protegees, Jean-Christophe Hérault and Julien Rasquinet, respectively. The brand has maintained that Olivier Creed is the nose behind those scents.
Oppeinheim said that Creed has not likely grown in value since it was owned by BlackRock, in part because those who created its hit scents are no longer behind the brand. Bourdon, who also created scents for the likes of Frederic Malle and Davidoff, has since retired, while Rasquinet now works for CPL Aromas and Hérault is a perfumer for International Fragrances & Flavors.
“It makes no sense that a $1 billion brand becomes a $3 billion brand becomes a $4 billion brand with no new successful fragrances over a three-year period,” he said. “The reason that Creed was such a genius creator of scents for men had to do with three specific people, none of whom [the company] kept on.”
Regarding the timeline of the brand’s fragrance heritage, a Creed representative stated to Glossy over email that, “The House of Creed started making fragrance over 250 years ago for its private clientele. In 1970, Olivier Creed opened the House, making the fragrance available to the general public.”
What’s in it for L’Oréal?
While Creed represented a major part of the Kering Beauté portfolio as it stands in 2025, in the long run, L’Oréal is likely to be counting on the addition of another major Kering player: Gucci.
“The surer thing is, finally, to Gucci’s great relief and to L’Oréal’s benefit, they know that, in 2028, when Coty finally doesn’t have the rights anymore, for 50 years, L’Oréal will have the ability to exploit the Gucci license,” said Oppenheim.
Coty’s license to produce Gucci beauty products is set to expire in 2028, at which time L’Oréal will be able to bring the brand into its purview, where it already manages designer fragrance lines like Yves Saint Laurent and Prada.
While Creed may not be worth the billions Kering paid for it, Monange believes it complements L’Oréal’s ongoing investments in the niche fragrance sector. And with its growing niche sector and the imminent arrival of Gucci, she believes L’Oréal is positioning itself as a rival to LVMH’s robust beauty portfolio.
“They are really trying hard to get to the luxury segment, where they were masstige, let’s say, before,” said Monange. “They have the distribution. They have the power of negotiation. They can get the best spots because it’s a negotiation in the mall, in the airport. So now, with the brands they have, it’s gonna be much easier for them. So I think [LVMH CEO] Bernard Arnault needs to watch out, for sure.”
