Fabergé Inc.

The U.S. company Fabergé Inc. is the legal successor of the House of Fabergé. Today the brand names Fabergé, Fabergé Co. and House of Fabergé are property of the Unilever company Lever Fabergé.

History

The russian jeweller Gustav Fabergé founded the jewellery firm House of Fabergé in 1842 in the old capital of St Petersburg. Fabergé opened a Moscow branch of his House of Fabergé in 1886. Further branches opened in Odessa (1890-1918), London (1903-1915) and Kiev (1906-1910).In 1916 the House of Fabergé was converted to a joint stock company. In 1918 Carl Fabergé fled first to Berlin, and later to Wiesbaden and Switzerland, where he died in 1920. The House of Fabergé was closed down by the Bosheviks in 1918. In 1924 Eugene and Alexander, two Fabergé sons who fled to Paris opened a small workshop called Fabergé & Cie. Fabergé’s brother Agathon fled to London in 1928 and opened a Fabergé store there for a short time. The store focused on retail of vintage Fabergé objects only.

Fabergé becomes an international brand

The American oil billionaire Armand Hammer collected many Fabergé pieces during his business ventures in communist Russia in the 1920’s. In 1937 Armand Hammer’s friend Samuel Rubin, owner of the Spanish Trading Corporation, which imported soap and olive oil, closed down his company because of the Spanish civil war and established a new enterprise to manufacture perfumes and toiletries. He registered it, at Hammer’s suggestion, as Fabergé Inc. The first licencing products using the brand name Fabergé were launched.

Ownership of Fabergé Inc.

Samuel Rubin purchased the brand name Fabergé from Fabergé & Cie for $25,000 in 1937. In 1964, Rubin sold Fabergé for $26 million to George Barrie and the Rayette Inc.

The Cosmetics company Rayette changed it's name in 1964 to Rayette-Fabergé Inc. and in 1971 the company name was changed to Fabergé Inc.

In 1984 McGregor Corp., a men's and boys' clothing maker bought Fabergé Inc. They changed their name temporarily to Mcgregor Fabergé. The Riklis Family Corporation bought a mayority of the McGregor stocks.

In 1989 the international corporation Unilever bought Fabergé Inc. from the Riklis Family Corporation. At the same time Fabergé Inc. bought Elizabeth Arden Company from Ely Lilly Inc. for $725 million, turning Fabergé into a $1.2 billion firm. The company was renamed Elida Fabergé. The deal now placed Unilever at equal first place with L'Oreal in the world cosmetics league, up from fourth place. In 2000 Elizabeth Arden was sold. Lever Fabergé was formed in early 2001 through the merger of the two Unilever companies, the American Unilever subsidary Lever Brothers and Elida Fabergé.

Development of the brand

From 1964 to 1984 under the direction of George Barrie Fabergé Inc. launched many well known and successful product lines, hired celebrities to endorse them and its media divisoin made feature movies.

Mr. Barrie supervised Fabergé's introduction of the popular Brut (cologne) toiletry line for Fabergé which was promoted by the football player Joe Namath's. Brut became the best selling cologne in the world at the time. It is still available in stores worldwide today.

In 1967 the movie star Cary Grant had been appointed a "Creative Consultant" to Rayette-Faberge. He spent a year attending sales conventions and visited Faberge plants around the world. In May 1968 Cary was elected a member of Faberge's board of directors. He received a salary of $15,000 a year, a rent paid luxury appartment in New York (where Faberge's HQ was located), unlimited travel expenses and the use of the company's private fleet of helicopters and planes. By 1970, Cary divided his time between Los Angeles and New York. He never endorsed specific products or appeared in commercials. When he visited department stores he met the staff rather than the customers.

In 1977 Barrie launched the Farrah Fawcett hair product and fragrance lines and he signed the actress and star of Charlies Angels to a promotional contract with Fabergé. A famous Fabergé TV ad featured Joe Namath being shaven by Farrah Fawcett.

The actor Roger Moore became another celebrity board member in 1970. George Barrie established Fabergé's filmmaking division, Brut Productions in 1970 and put together the Academy Award winning movie titeled A Touch of Class in 1973 and other feature movies.

Barrie launched the Babe fragrance in 1976, which in its first year became Fabergé's largest selling women's fragrance worldwide. The grand daughter of writer Ernest Hemingway, actress and model Margaux Hemingway received a $1 million contract to promote the perfume Babe by Fabergé in a very popular advertising campaign. She later lost the contract due to her unflattering image as a perpetually drunk typical model at Studio 54. Her famous Babe campaign was remembered again by millions after her mysterious death in 1996. Babe received two awards from the Fragrance Foundation for its launch: Most Successful Introduction of a Women's Fragrance in Popular Distribution, and Best Advertising Campaign for Women's Fragrance.

By 1984 the company had expanded its personal care products to Aphrodisia, Aqua Net Hair Spray, Babe, Cavale, Brut, Ceramic Nail glaze, Flambeau, Great Skin, Grande Finale, Just Wonderful, Macho, Kiku, Partage, Tip Top Accessories, Tigress, Woodhue, Xandu, Zizanie de Fragonard, Caryl Richards, Farrah Fawcett and Fabergé Organics. The company also bought other Firms and products, including D-LANZ and it's product BreastCare a breast cancer screening device.

In 1984 McGregor acquired Fabergé and discontinued many Faberge products including the original breast device D-LANZ. The company launches Mcgregor by Fabergé (Cologne) the same year. New product lines were introduced including men's, women's and children's apparel under the trademarks Billy the Kid, Scoreboard and Wonderknit.

In 1986 Mark Goldston, a specialist in evaluating areas of untapped sales and profit, was named President of Fabergé. He was principally responsible for targeting and acquiring the Elizabeth Arden Company from Ely Lilly Inc.. The new company Lever Fabergé today owns hundreds of cosmetics, household and other brands including Dove (brand), Impulse, Sure, Lynx, Organics, Timotei and Signal, Persil, Comfort, Domestos, Surf, Sun and Cif.

Fabergé jewelry

There have been constant attempts since 1964 to re-establish a jewellery brand and low quality accessories have been produced under licence by several manufacturers for Fabergé Inc. In 1989 Fabergé Inc. appointed the Pforzheim jeweler Victor Mayer as the exclusive worldwide Fabergé workmaster. The company produces heirloom quality Fabergé jewelry and Fabergé eggs.

Franklin Mint received a licence to use the brand name for limited editions of mass products such as dolls and other memorabilia.

Further licences to use the name Fabergé in a very limited fashion for commercial products are given to Barbie, Limoges and others.

Tatiana Fabergé and Theo Fabergé are among a dozen surviving descendants Gustav Fabergés. They both promote jewelry product lines but neither of them owns the rights to the famous family name.

Trivia

The cologne Brut 33 by Fabergé had a product placement in the Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). In the fight in the dancer's dressing-room, Roger Moore sprays one of the villains in the face with an aerosol can of what is clearly Brut-33, a nod to the Fabergé company with which Moore was associated. ^*

External links

Movies^* history^* Lever Faberge^* ^* Richard Barrie, Faberge Inc. ^* Rayette-Faberge^* Cary Crant^*