Smell Like Money: Puig's €8 Billion Plan Rides a Fragrance Boom Built on TikTok and Dupes

Puig wants to be one of the two biggest fragrance companies in the world, and it just told investors how. At its first capital markets day as a listed company, held in Madrid on October 28, the Spanish beauty group behind Rabanne, Carolina Herrera and Charlotte Tilbury set a target of more than €8 billion in net sales by 2032, up from €5.04 billion in 2025, FashionUnited reported. "'Vision 2032' is our plan to scale what works, profitably," CEO José Manuel Albesa said, according to Cosmetics Business.

The plan arrives five months after merger talks with Estée Lauder collapsed and Puig's shares fell 15% in a day, their worst drop since the 2024 IPO, per FashionUnited. Its answer to "what now" is the category that has carried beauty for three years: fragrance.

Why Is Fragrance Booming?

Because it became the affordable luxury of choice for a new set of buyers. In the US, prestige fragrance sales rose 6% in the first half of 2026 and mass-market fragrance jumped 15%, the fastest-growing mass beauty category, according to Circana. "Beauty continues to benefit from consumers' willingness to shop across price tiers, selectively investing in products that deliver the strongest emotional and functional value," said Circana's Larissa Jensen.

The big companies report the same thing. Estée Lauder's fragrance sales grew 10% organically in its last fiscal year, led by Le Labo, Tom Ford and Kilian Paris, according to its results. L'Oréal called fragrance the "primary engine" of its luxury division this month and singled out men's fragrance across regions, in its nine-month sales release.

Who Is Actually Buying All This Perfume?

Teenagers, young men and TikTok. Piper Sandler's latest survey of about 9,000 US teens found 77% of teen girls and 51% of teen boys wear fragrance every day, BeautyMatter reported. Male-focused fragrance creators on TikTok grew twelvefold between April 2024 and April 2025, according to Charm.io data compiled for Bloomberg and reported by Bloomberg Línea, and men's fragrance spending on TikTok Shop has passed women's.

For a lot of young men, a signature scent has become what sneakers were a decade ago. It is a collectible, a personality marker and a reason to make content. Fragrance reviews, "blind buy" videos and rankings of the best scents for a date are now their own genre, with creators who can move a bottle the way a sneaker reviewer once moved a release.

Are Fragrance Dupes Hurting Luxury Brands?

They are taking a real slice. Dossier, which sells scents inspired by designer fragrances, made about US$60 million in US sales in 2025 and was growing 120% a year as of February, Glossy reported. CEO Sergio Tache said dupe culture grew "because the luxury brands increased their price by so much." Another dupe brand, MCo, saw a 10,000% sales spike after it declared April 4 "National Dupe Day," YPulse reported.

Circana's data shows the pressure. Prestige fragrance prices rose about 5% in the first half while units stayed flat, which means the luxury side is growing by charging more, not by selling more bottles. Mass fragrance grew units by 7%.

Is Everyone Winning the Fragrance Boom?

No, and that is the warning inside Puig's plan. Coty, one of the largest fragrance licensing companies, reported a 5% drop in like-for-like sales for its fiscal year, partly on "lower fragrance shipments," according to its earnings release. Puig's own fragrance and fashion division grew just 3.9% like-for-like in the third quarter, while its makeup unit grew 16.1%, Premium Beauty News reported. Even the teen surge may be peaking. Piper Sandler found haircare overtook fragrance as the fastest-growing teen category.

Puig knows where its gap is. Women's fragrance is 65% of the global market but only 45% of Puig's business, Cosmetics Business reported, and the company plans to add a Charlotte Tilbury fragrance line in 2028. Executive chairman Marc Puig said the company is "stronger than at any point in our over 110-year history."

McKinsey's latest State of Beauty research puts the global market at about US$590 billion by 2030, with fragrance now the third-largest category and growing about 8% a year since 2019, according to a summary in CosinKorea. The money is real, but the people driving it are the hardest customers to keep. They found their scents on TikTok, they will try a dupe before they pay for the original, and they will move on when the next creator posts. Puig's €8 billion target depends on brands that can stay interesting to that audience for six more years.