When Caius von Knorring, Aurélien Guichard and Cédric Meiffret conceived of the perfume brand Matiere Premiere in 2017, they looked up to the likes of Byredo or Maison Francis Kurkdjian as inspiration for what a niche fragrance house could achieve. At the time, that was about $25 million in annual retail sales.
“That was the horizon we had when we started. And even if we had done half of that, we would have been happy,” said von Knorring, who serves as CEO of Matiere Premiere and held positions at LVMH and Puig before co-founding the brand.
Matiere Premiere hit the market in 2019 with six perfumes created by Guichard. Since then, niche perfume has become a billion-dollar business, with Byredo and Creed commanding billion-dollar exits and Amouage reporting nearly $500 million in annual retail sales. Subsequently, the ceiling that a brand like Matiere Premiere can reach has only grown. And Matiere Premiere has its eye on growth.
“We’re not thinking about making perfumes for a happy few — this was really never our philosophy. We have always wanted our perfumes to be accessible and understandable, but with the highest quality and with this cool, minimalistic approach,” said von Knorring. “We don’t see ourselves as a niche brand — we see ourselves as a global perfume house.”
While Byredo’s approach to minimalism was based on sleek packaging and evocative, fantastical names like Mojave Ghost and Gypsy Water, Matiere Premiere, whose name translates to “raw material,” puts the focus on more literal notes. Each perfume is built around an overdose of a single ingredient, like Peruvian ambrette in Parisian Musc or Greek saffron in Crystal Saffron. Some, like the rose in Radical Rose and tuberose in French Flower, come from Matiere Premiere’s own farms in Grasse.
That approach — along with distribution in global, high-end retailers like Harrods and Galeries Lafayette — was quick to attract investors. In 2020, Matiere Premiere raised €1.3 million ($1.5 million) in outside funding. In 2024, Kering Beauté took a minority stake in the brand. L’Oréal acquired Kering’s beauty division in October for $4.6 billion. According to von Knorring, at the time of the Kering investment in 2024, Matiere Premiere was earning €30 million ($35 million) in annual retail sales and has since grown that figure by 70% twice over.
“If you want to be in this environment, you have to be able to scale up,” said von Knorring. “Because the next big perfume houses of tomorrow are going to be the ones that will be able to scale up today.”
Matiere Premiere has been scaling up. In June, the brand opened its first flagship store on Paris’s Rue Saint-Honoré. By February, Matiere Premiere had added two additional stores to the fleet, in Berlin’s Mitte neighborhood and London’s Covent Garden. The three stores were made in collaboration with Swedish design studio Halleroed, which has also created retail spaces for the likes of Alaïa and Schiaparelli.
“Retail is not really about just multiplying doors. It’s really about building a brand experience, strengthening our global positioning,” said von Knorring. “We see ourselves as a global brand, so it’s important to have a showcase flagship in most of the big cities.”
The French brand has its eye on the U.S. as one of the next markets primed for retail expansion, with New York and Los Angeles among the contenders for a Matiere Premiere store. And it’s not the only perfume brand vying for retail space in New York City’s shopping corridors — Amouage opened a boutique on Spring Street in Soho in October, while the Estée Lauder Companies opened stores for four of its perfume brands just a block away that same month. But Matiere Premiere’s strategy is not limited to one of the perfume hubs that have popped up in Nolita and Soho in recent years.
“We believe this very old saying, which is, ‘Location, location, location.’ So, we try to stick to that,” said von Knorring. “In London [on King Street in Covent Garden], there are a couple of perfumeries, but it’s not the perfumery street. It’s a top, top retail location for high-end, luxury products with an international image. So, I suppose we would have the same thinking in New York.”
Even without a standalone store, the brand already has a strong entry point to U.S. consumers: Vanilla Powder. Launched in 2023 just as vanilla-centric gourmands were infiltrating the perfume market from mass to luxury, Vanilla Powder has become the brand’s top selling scent.
“I had the impression when I was in the U.S. that people knew Vanilla Powder maybe more than they knew Matiere Premiere. But it’s a good sign,” said von Knorring. “Vanilla Powder being as successful as it is enables us to slow down a little bit. We don’t have the necessity or the stress to be in this rush of launching. It gives us the luxury to be more thoughtful about every launch.”
Since Vanilla Powder, Matiere Premiere has launched extrait de parfum versions of its bestsellers and launched candles, but it has yet to introduce another original eau de parfum. While countless perfumes have hit the market to capitalize on the fragrance craze in that time, von Knorring is confident that today’s perfume customers are willing to wait for quality scents.
“I see that people have been warning about the niche category slowing down for 20 years. And we haven’t seen that happening at all,” said von Knorring. “There are a lot of young people who are really into niche perfumes. I don’t think these people will go back to the more traditional prestige fragrances we used to wear, or our parents used to wear.”
