CEO Sue Nabi discusses Coty's 120th anniversary and the transformative journey under her leadership

Thank you for having me and the team. Oh, and the team you brought your wonderful team. Absolutely, they're all behind.

This is a fantastic moment, I have to say. You know, I joined this company almost three and a half years ago, and we've been totally transforming Coty. You know, the company is today one of the fastest growing, if not the fastest growing, beauty company of this size on the market. And celebrating the 120th anniversary of the company that invented modern perfumery 120 years ago, as you can imagine, the circle is fully drawn: Paris, New York, back to Paris in the coming days. So it means a lot to me and to the teams around me.

Yes indeed, the progress has been, I have to say, very, very strong. We have been presenting our strategy three years ago, two and a half years ago: a six-pillar strategy about our consumer beauty division, our prestige division, about our ambition in the skincare market, our ambition in terms of geographical footprint, digital footprint, R&D footprint, and of course sustainability. And I can tell you that we have been delivering consistently, quarter after quarter, year after year, on all these pillars, most of the time ahead of any kind of guidance or expectation we've been giving. I can tell you that eight out of the last 10 quarters, Coty has been the fastest growing beauty company, which is, as you can imagine, a source of pride and also gives us the confidence to look at the future quite assertively, I have to say. So for me, it's really a fantastic moment to celebrate these achievements. We've recently launched one of the most successful fragrances of the industry, Burberry Goddess, that's becoming the biggest blockbuster of the industry. We are continuing to put on the market fragrances that have been designed to become the next blockbusters. I'm thinking about the latest fragrance, Kylie Cosmic, I'm thinking about the new Marc Jacobs Daisy Wild fragrance, and a lot to come in the coming quarters.

It's important and exciting because this name invented the modern perfumery industry. It was 120 years ago that someone at Coty decided to create what is today shaping the fragrance business. This name is behind the creation of the chypre family. The chypre family today is behind 80% of the top 10 successes worldwide. It's really a new way to compose a scent, and it was created by Coty. The ambery family was created by Coty decades and decades ago. And for the first time, this company was also the first company to fuse together synthetic ingredients together with natural ingredients. So this company is the company of firsts since 1904, I have to say. So we said for the 120th anniversary, what would be great is this name gets back a substance, gets back a substance not looking back but looking to the future, looking forward, and we called it Infiniment Coty. You were asking me how to pronounce the name — that's the way we want to pronounce it. The French infiniment Coty. And Infiniment Coty is really for me the epitome of what fragrances should be from now on. Everything is innovative: the formula is the most simple, most minimalistic formula there is. The scent, there is something secret called the Molecular Aura. Upcycled alcohol — we take pollution from factories and transform it into alcohol and water and nothing else — but the performance of what's inside is maximalist: 30 hours of lastingness. There is no fragrance in the industry that can promise to last for 30 hours. As true as it is, from the moment you spray it to the end of the day, you remember the pyramid that everyone talks about in fragrances with the top notes, heart notes, and bottom notes? For the first time, a fragrance is going to be a sphere in the shape of a sphere, and this sphere will surround you all the day. That's what we call the Molecular Aura, and people will smell on you what you smelled in the morning when you sprayed it for the first time. The packaging is outstandingly innovative: bottles made to be stackable, it's under patent today to be stackable. And when you stack all these bottles together, they become a canvas for art. So we ask artists to transform our bottles into a piece of art that's going to be auctioned. So better than recycling, upcycling, we call it art cycling. And last but not least, these fragrances are very personal. They tell a lot about my stories, the stories of Nicola VI, the co-founder of the line. We wanted to make it as personal as possible. And I think it's the first time in the beauty industry that a CEO is also the co-founder, you know, of a brand that holds the name of the company, which for me is very important because it keeps me in sync with the reality of our market. You know, it's not just about figures like we see around us, but it's also about what is the most important item: a bottle with a scent inside and a story to tell.

You know, the Undefined Beauty campaign I think is the most innovative campaign of the beauty industry maybe since 20 years. It's a campaign that we decided to really put in front of everyone who is listening to us, looking at us, because we realized that the definitions of the word 'beauty' in English dictionary was mainly about women or female gender, and mainly about young people, while beauty is in all ages, all genders. Whatever is your age, whatever is the gender you feel comfortable in, you need to find a model of beauty that fits you. So it's very important for us to contribute to change these definitions. So we've put online a petition that's almost 10,000 signatures today. This petition is really, and I join, I ask everyone watching at us and including you to sign this petition because we want this definition to change so that the young generations don't think that being beautiful is a matter of age or being beautiful is a matter of gender. Being beautiful is really a matter of who you are, how you feel comfortable, how you project your own self in front of the rest of the world. So that's why it's so important and it matters for me, for all the associates, and I guess for anyone who loves this industry. You know, beauty is the most talked topic online from all the industries. The highest number of talks or tweets online is coming around beauty. So it's a very important cultural topic nowadays everywhere, including in the USA.

Thank you for having me.