A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

The Cost-Cutting Playbook for Modern Brands

Global commerce is only getting more complex—and inefficiency is getting more expensive.

Swap’s Unified Commerce Report breaks down how forward-thinking brands are cutting costs and reclaiming margin by streamlining their operations from the inside out.

Inside, you’ll find the 5 C’s of Connected Commerce, plus real examples from brands like Zara, Nike, and Glossier.

From fulfillment to compliance to inventory accuracy—it’s the growth-minded playbook your tech stack needs in 2025.

👉Get the full report and start scaling smarter: Download Now

And now, over to Rachel…

While the fashion world spends a great deal of time obsessing about the comings and goings of top designers and executives, the beauty industry is seemingly less worried about succession. And yet, in recent months, the business has experienced a series of generational shocks: Tiffany Masterson, who essentially created the “clean beauty” category at Drunk Elephant, exited the brand she founded. So did Supergoop’s Holly Thaggard, who elevated sunblock from the drugstore aisle and popularized the notion of “unseen” sunscreen. Most recently, of course, Byredo founder Ben Gorham stepped down, three years after Puig took a majority stake in the fragrance company for more than $1 billion.

Even Puig executives have some trepidation about Byredo’s identity without its visionary founder. “Ben is Ben,” one Puig executive told me, noting how Gorham put his stamp on the brand’s iconic typography and its cohesive portfolio of fragrances. “We keep thinking about the products and that there’s no need for a figurehead, but what if there is? Especially for a brand that’s as founder-centric as this one.”

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

5 Steps to Winning in Q4

The holiday rush is coming—but the smartest commerce brands are already preparing.

Swap’s new guide lays out five essential strategies to get ahead of peak season chaos. From cross-border fulfillment to tax compliance and returns, it’s your blueprint for a smoother Q4—and stronger margins.

Inside, you’ll find:

🎯 The key ops moves to make in July—not October

🌍 How to go global with zero surprises at checkout

📦 How leading brands are turning returns into retention

This is the growth-minded playbook your ops team needs to win Q4.

Download the full guide

Gorham is indeed something of a legend in the fragrance industry—an enigmatic, 48-year-old former Swedish basketball player who created a veritable lifestyle brand expressed through $200+ fragrances with names like Mojave Ghost, Gypsy Water, and Rose of No Man’s Land. The messaging was elusive and impressionistic—I once walked away from an interview with him having no idea what the perfume he was about to launch was actually supposed to smell like. But the business, fueled by a 2013 majority investment from taste-driven, Fisher-family-backed Manzanita Capital, was real. In 2022, Puig paid over $1 billion for a majority stake in Byredo, which was said to be doing about $200 million in revenue at the time via retail and e-commerce.

In the past two decades, many of Puig’s brands have become formidable players in the designer fragrance space. Carolina Herrera has steadily climbed up the female fragrance rankings, with Good Girl finally dethroning Chanel last year as the bestselling perfume brand in the U.S. Puig’s number one brand, Rabanne, does more than $1 billion in revenue, due largely to the ongoing success of the 1 Million franchise.

But Puig’s niche and indie sector has seen meaningful growth, too, especially since Covid. In Byredo, Puig acquired an influential player in the independent fragrance category, whose branding and aesthetic was widely copied. (The number of brands that have replicated Gorham’s white label and black sans-serif logo is too high to count at this point.) “It’s the one that’s leading double-digit growth in niche at Puig,” said a person close to the brand. Byredo is certainly an outlier at Puig, whose blockbuster labels trend toward the affordable and mass designer variety. Gorham, himself, may also not have exactly fit with the family-owned Spanish company and its longtime executives who were fluent in travel retail—but so far, the fragrance brand he founded is finding its footing as it integrates into a multibillion-dollar publicly traded company.

Still, some worry that Byredo is getting lost in a larger division of niche brands, which includes Penhaligon’s, L’Artisan Parfumeur, Dries Van Noten, and Christian Louboutin, most of which “aren’t as cool or as globally known as Byredo,” as one executive put it. Others believe that the brand opened too many stores (there are currently 75), some of which don’t drive enough meaningful revenue, and that its expanded categories ($3,500 handbags?) have come at the expense of its core offerings.

Then there’s Gorham, who may’ve had one foot out the door before he even arrived at Puig. Such is the case with many founders biding their time until their contracts expire, after which they can free themselves of their corporate parentco to start something new. I don’t know the specific details of his contract, but I have heard that 5 percent of Gorham’s stake was tied up in performance-based earn-outs and remaining at the brand for three years. And the founder’s restlessness began to show even before his exit. For months before he left, he had the “open to work” setting visible on his LinkedIn profile. Whether it was a deliberate snub or just an oddly cheeky form of rebellion, it’s still there, for anyone to see.

Byredo’s North American business may be the most challenged, I’m told. The brand is in the process of closing multiple doors, including in San Francisco and Silver Lake. An insider said that “everything in the U.S. is off its peak,” noting that the brand’s top-performing SoHo store is down about 20 percent, and that Byredo’s fleet of U.S. stores are down by double digits on average. However, the person familiar with the business said that Puig is actively searching for new retail opportunities in the U.S. market, and plans to add more than 10 new stores this year, in addition to recently opened locations in Tokyo and Barcelona. Another person added: “The U.S. market, which is very significant for the brand, is not in the negatives.”

Indeed, despite whatever’s happening in North America, insiders insist that the brand is growing overall. As of May, I’m told, Byredo’s wholesale business was up 8 percent year-to-date in the U.S. A person with knowledge of Byredo’s business posited that any challenges in North America may just be “growing and transition pains that took longer than necessary.” (Byredo, after all, has a newish leadership team in place.) But it’s also true that the brand’s profile—luxury fragrance with a significant D.T.C. business—is not really its parentco’s core competency.

Puig is mostly a wholesaler, not a retailer, and it’s more difficult to get buyers to pick up a $250 perfume in-store than it is to sell $100 fragrances tied to fashion houses with massive ad campaigns. “The people running Byredo now are the kinds of leaders who are used to scaling Carolina Herrera or Rabanne in travel retail or Macy’s,” explained a person close to Puig’s various businesses. “Which is great, but Byredo had a certain air and coolness. How do you hold on to that and keep scaling with a different group of people?”

Historically, Puig has done really well with other entrepreneurs and founder-led brands, like Dries Van Noten and Charlotte Tilbury. (Tilbury herself recently signed a new contract and joined the board.) But there are other, brand-specific factors that made these ventures work, none of which apply to Gorham and Byredo. An insider suggested that Gorham’s value depreciated much quicker than that of Van Noten or Tilbury. “Ben was a [talented] brander, and able to name these amazing fragrances that evoke some sort of emotion,” this person said. “But as a product, does it stand on its own the way Diptyque does?” (Manzanita also owns Diptyque, which it purchased in 2005.)

Alas, Byredo likely would’ve faced many of these same issues even if it had stayed independent. When Gorham founded Byredo in 2006, having a collection where every single bottle looked exactly the same was, itself, a point of differentiation. But trends and culture change, and Gorham would’ve eventually had to figure out what Byredo is, beyond a minimalist typeface with spherical caps. Now, that’s Puig’s problem.

The Virgil Abloh Archive™️, run by the late designer’s wife, Shannon Abloh, and his former assistant turned archivist, Athiththan Selvendran, is staging an exhibition devoted to his work at the Grand Palais this fall. [Vogue]

L.L.Bean is looking for a new C.E.O. [Retail Dive]

Simone Bellotti’s first imagery for Jil Sander is here, complete with a custom Bochum Welt score. We are ready for seaglass shirting! [Vogue]

Thom Browne opened two stores on the Upper East Side, the only real neighborhood left in New York City. [WWD]

Richemont’s first-quarter sales are out, and jewelry sales were good (up 11 percent), while watches were down 7 percent and “other”—Chloé, Alaïa, etcetera—were basically flat. Reading between the lines: Alaïa and Peter Millar, Matt Belloni’s favorite brand, are still growing (or have “momentum,” as the presentation says); Chloé hasn’t quite caught on yet, but there is hope (a.k.a. “encouraging signs”). [Here’s a Useful Deck Where They Employ the Font “Hey Insomnia”]

Until Wednesday,
Lauren

P.S.: We are using affiliate links because we are a business. We may make a couple bucks off them.

Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news.

You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with {{customer.email}}. To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St, New York, NY 10006