Get to Know Michel Germain, Canada’s Master of Fragrances
It seems like everyone and their mom has a fragrance these days — in recent years, celebrities and fashion brands alike have flooded the market with signature scents. It’s rare to find a standalone fragrance brand, and rarer still to find one that is Canadian. Enter Michel Germain — a name you might not be familiar with, but should be.
Since 1994, Germain has established himself as Canada’s premier perfumer, largely thanks to the instantaneous success of Sexual, his very first fragrance. Recently, the Quebec native accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2016 Canadian Fragrance Awards, honouring the continued growth and esteem of his independent label. We caught up with Germain to discuss his early inspirations, creative process and plans for the future.
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What inspired you to start your fragrance business?
It was really my wife Norma that got all this started. I love fragrance, but when I met Norma I noticed she didn’t really wear fragrance a lot. One day in 1989 I said, “You know, I really wish you’d wear more perfume.” And she said to me, “I would if I could find one that made me feel sexual and attractive.” She said it with such confidence and I was just captivated, so I told her: “Okay, I’m gonna create one for you.” I’m the type of person when I say if I’m gonna do something, I do it, not really realizing what I was getting into. So it’s been a labour of love, a real dream come true.
Tell me about your first fragrance.
Sexual was the first fragrance, and it was really created for Norma, and she was actually the face of our brand for the first number of years. We started with just ladies only, it took us five years to create the brand and then we launched at Hudson’s Bay in 1994 and it’s been fantastic. We added Sexual Pour Homme in 1997 which just took off for us, and thankfully so because it really gave us a substantial business to work with. It did so well, we were number one at Bloomingdale’s four years running. We’re in a very competitive marketplace but, you know, we have a great brand, we have a great brand name and more importantly, the fragrances resonate with the customer.
Was “Sexual” really not trademarked already?
Well, in 1989 when I went to the lawyer and I said, “I want to create this fragrance, one of my friends was saying you’d probably need a trademark or something.” And so the lawyer said, “You know, there’s no way this thing is available. But I will run the search for you.” Back then, they had to do manual searches and it took around two weeks to hear back. But in fact, when he got back to me he was amazed that it was completely wide open. So, it was like a sign and that really stuck with me and made me feel like we were on the right path.
There have been a lot of iterations of the Sexual fragrance over the years, with the most recent being Sexual Paris for both men and women. How do you know when it’s the right time to introduce a new version, and how do you differentiate it form the other’s that have come before?
For the first ten years, we only ran with Sexual and Sexual Pour Homme, the two classic brands. You’ve seen in the last five to eight years the massive number of celebrities that have come into the fragrance world and as a result we have also had all the major fashion brands introducing fragrance to be competitive. We were sitting on the side and we knew we had to be a part of this to keep growing. So the marketplace kind of drove that. But the new flavours of Sexual have really expanded the collection and let us touch a varied amount of customers, depending on the style of scent.
How have you developed your fragrances? Are you the nose, or do you collaborate on the scents?
We’ve always worked with International Flavors and Fragrances, IFF, the largest fragrance oil company in the world. They have greenhouses and labs in New York City, and they have their facility in Grasse, France, which I’ve been to — I’ve stood in the fields of jasmine and rose there, and it’s just like, “Wow.” It’s heaven. So, I’ve been privileged to work with some incredible perfumers. Sexual was with Sophia Grojsman — she did Calvin Klein’s Eternity — and Sexual Pour Homme was with Carlos Benaïm, who did the original Ralph Lauren Polo.
With Carlos, I was in love with basil, so we used an Indian basil. We kept adding and adding that it got to a point that it had such a distinctive signature and it was so subliminally powerful. It can make you think of your mother’s kitchen smelling her cooking, romantic dinners — all these things played very heavily into the scent. In the last number of years I’ve been working with Laurent Le Guernec, a Parisian perfumer, and we work as team. You evolve the recipe until you get closer and closer. As soon as you smell the right blend, you like it right off the bat.
What does it mean to you being an independent Canadian fragrance brand and finding success against much bigger players?
We are so proud to be a Canadian brand. It says “Made in Canada” right on the back of our bottles. But I’ve built this brand by wanting to go head-to-head on the quality and the fragrance experience with international brands. It took lots of hard work first of all, and many years of it. Most fragrances in the prestige category are very well-known fashion brands, in most cases — we’re actually an exception to the rule, to be just a standalone fragrance. In fact, to exist after 22 years in really unheard of. The only other one I can think of is Elizabeth Taylor.
But she was personality to begin with, too. She kind of beat the celebrity fragrance trend.
Yes, you’re right. She was before the whole trend, but what is interesting is the fact that she does deserve the credit that she stood the test of time. When I look at Sexual it has passed the test of time and the future is never-ending. I don’t think Sexual’s going to go out of vogue unless mankind changes, right? The desire to feel sexy and attractive will always be there — that’s never going to change.
So what’s next for Michel Germain?
Growth. I see lots of opportunity. We’ve gotten very good at what we’re doing — we’re accomplished, we have a very stable business, so I just see nothing but opportunity. We have a lot of great creative stuff in the tube, you’re gonna see some interesting things coming down the pipe, and it’s only going to get much, much better. I think the first 22 years will look nothing like the next five or ten years.
