Fabergé (cosmetics)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fabergé is a cosmetics and houseware company owned by the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Unilever. The company owns the brand name Fabergé which is distributed to its licencees. The jewellery company Victor Mayer holds the licence to make Fabergé (line) jewellery in homage to Peter Carl Fabergé, the founder of the company.

1 Ownership of the Fabergé name
2 The Fabergé cosmetics brand
3 Trivia
4 External links

[edit] Ownership of the Fabergé name

The name Faberge is an invention of Gustav Fabergé. It was a complete touch of genius that Gustav, Carl's father, adapted the family name to the world market. Before they were Faberg without the 'e'. In Russian the letter 'g' is pronounced 'jay'. So he added the 'e' with an accent.[1] The name became so powerful that it captured the imagination of royalty in Russia and around the world.

In 1924, Eugene and Alexander, two Fabergé sons who fled to Paris, opened a small workshop called Fabergé & Cie. Fabergé’s brother Agathon fled to London in 1928 and reopened a Fabergé store there for a short period. The store focused on retail of vintage Fabergé objects.

The American businessman Samuel Rubin started to use the name Fabergé in 1937 for his cosmetics products. He finally purchased the rights to the brand name Fabergé from the Fabergé brothers who owned Fabergé & Cie for $25,000 in 1951. Both brothers died in the following two years. In 1964, Rubin sold Fabergé Inc. for $26 million to George Barrie and the cosmetics company Rayette.

In 1964, Rayette changed its name to Rayette-Fabergé Inc., and, in 1971, the company name was changed to Fabergé Inc.

In 1984, the McGregor Corp., a men's and boys' clothing maker, bought Fabergé. They changed their name temporarily to McGregor Fabergé. The Riklis Family Corporation, headed by Meshulam Riklis, bought a majority of the shares of McGregor.

In 1989, Unilever bought Fabergé from the Riklis Family Corporation. At the same time, Fabergé bought Elizabeth Arden from Ely Lilly for $725 million, turning Fabergé into a $1.2 billion firm. The company was renamed Elida Fabergé. The deal now placed Unilever at equal first place with L'Oreal in the world cosmetics league, up from fourth place.

In 2000, Elizabeth Arden was sold. Lever Fabergé was formed in early 2001 through the merger of the two Unilever companies, the American subsidiary Lever Brothers and Elida Fabergé.

[edit] The Fabergé cosmetics brand

The American oil billionaire Armand Hammer collected many Fabergé pieces during his business ventures in communist Russia in the 1920s. In 1937, Armand Hammer’s friend Samuel Rubin, owner of the Spanish Trading Corporation which imported soap and olive oil, closed down his company because of the Spanish Civil War and established a new enterprise to manufacture perfumes and toiletries. He registered it, at Hammer’s suggestion, as Fabergé, Inc. The first licencing products using the brand name Fabergé were launched.

From 1964 to 1984 under the direction of George Barrie, Fabergé launched many successful cosmetics products and hired celebrities to endorse them. In addition a media division made feature movies.

Mr. Barrie supervised Fabergé's introduction of the popular Brut toiletry line for Fabergé which was promoted by the football players Joe Namath, Paul Gascoigne and Kevin Keegan, as well as the boxers Mohamed Ali [2] and Henry Cooper, and the actress Kelly Le Brock [3] among others. Brut became the best selling cologne in the world at the time. It is still available in stores worldwide today.

In 1967 movie star Cary Grant had been appointed a "creative consultant" to Rayette-Faberge. He spent a year attending sales conventions and visited Faberge plants around the world. In May 1968, Grant was elected a member of Faberge's board of directors. He received a salary of $15,000 a year, a rent-paid luxury apartment in New York City (where Faberge's HQ was located), unlimited travel expenses and the use of the company's private fleet of helicopters and planes. By 1970, Grant divided his time between Los Angeles and New York. He never endorsed specific products or appeared in commercials.

In 1977 Barrie launched the Farrah Fawcett hair product and fragrance lines and he signed the actress and star of Charlie's Angels to a promotional contract with Fabergé. A famous Fabergé TV ad featured Joe Namath being shaven by Farrah Fawcett.

James Bond actorRoger Moore became another celebrity board member in 1970. George Barrie established Fabergé's filmmaking division, Brut Productions, in 1970 and produced the Academy Award-winning movie, A Touch of Class in 1973 and other feature movies.

Barrie launched the Babe fragrance in 1976 which, in its first year, became Fabergé's largest-selling women's fragrance worldwide.

The granddaughter of writer Ernest Hemingway, actress and model Margaux Hemingway, received a $1 million contract to promote the perfume Babe by Fabergé[4] in a very popular advertising campaign. Her famous Babe campaign was remembered again by millions after her mysterious death in 1996. Babe received two awards from the Fragrance Foundation for its launch, Most Successful Introduction of a Women's Fragrance in Popular Distribution and Best Advertising Campaign for Women's Fragrance.

By 1984, the company had expanded its personal care products to Aphrodisia, Aqua Net Hair Spray, Babe, Cavale, Brut, Ceramic Nail glaze, Flambeau, Great Skin, Grande Finale, Just Wonderful, Macho, Kiku, Partage, Tip Top Accessories, Tigress, Woodhue, Xandu, Zizanie de Fragonard, Caryl Richards, Farrah Fawcett and Fabergé Organics.

In 1984, McGregor acquired Fabergé and discontinued many Faberge products. The company launched Mcgregor by Fabergé cologne the same year. New product lines were introduced including men's, women's, and children's apparel under the trademarks Billy the Kid, Scoreboard, and Wonderknit.

In 1986, Mark Goldston, a specialist in evaluating areas of untapped sales and profit, was named President of Fabergé. He was principally responsible for targeting and acquiring Elizabeth Arden from Ely Lilly. The new company, Lever Fabergé today owns hundreds of cosmetics, household, and other brands including Dove (brand), Impulse, Sure, Lynx, Organics, Timotei and Signal, Persil, Comfort, Domestos, Surf, Sun and Cif.

[edit] Trivia

The cologne Brut 33 by Fabergé had a product placement in the 1974 James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun. In the fight in the dancer's dressing-room, Roger Moore sprays one of the villains in the face with an aerosol can of what is clearly Brut-33, a nod to the Fabergé company with which Moore was associated. [5]

Limited licences to endorse products with the name Fabergé were given to Barbie, Limoges, Franklin Mint and others.

Tatiana Fabergé and Theo Fabergé are among the surviving descendants of Gustav Fabergé. They both promote jewellery product lines, but neither of them owns the rights to the famous family name.