Whose Brand Is It, Anyway?

"Smell Me"

For all the hoopla and fireworks in the summer of 2002, there was great uncertainty about the prospects for Glow by J.Lo. Department store buyers, Women's Wear Daily was reporting, considered the fragrance "a wild card." The product was an eau de toilette -- a perfume that has been watered-down so that it can be sprayed -- aimed at 15- to 25-year-old girls. Could Jennifer Lopez really get them to lay down $38 for a small bottle of it?

Adding to the concern, the J.Lo clothing lines had not done nearly as well as expected. The first, introduced the previous October, had disappointed both customers and department-store buyers. Bloomingdale's Kal Ruttenstein, who had expressed such high hopes for the brand initially, wound up deciding not to carry it. "I was worried about quality and fit," he told The New York Times. Customers were less diplomatic. "I don't like it," 15-year-old Christina Torres -- a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx, just like Jennifer Lopez -- told the Times, referring to a $24 T-shirt with a glittery J.Lo logo. "It looks cheap."

Moving to address the problems, Sweetface announced a major shakeup in June 2002, bringing in Denise Seegal as the new chief executive. An industry veteran with a sterling reputation, Seegal had previously been the founding president of DKNY and president of Liz Claiborne Inc., as well as an executive at Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. In addition, Sweetface lured a top designer, Heather Thomson, away from Sean John, the highly successful clothing company of Lopez's former boyfriend, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.

The new team went into action immediately, changing the positioning of the brand, adding new lines of clothing, upgrading the design, generally improving quality. Although the early reviews were encouraging, it would be fall before anyone could assess how effective the changes had been. One factor, Seegal and her colleagues believed, would be the success of the fragrance. If customers really liked it, they would be more inclined to take a second look at the clothing. But no one could predict how Glow by J.Lo would do. Never before had a one-year-old fashion business, a start-up really, launched a fragrance on the scale that was contemplated for Glow.

So the Sweetface people had a lot riding on Jennifer Lopez's new juice (as it's known in the trade), and so did Coty and Lancaster. Arguably, Lancaster's Catherine Walsh had the most at stake. If Jennifer Lopez was the face of Glow, Walsh was its driving force. An 11-year veteran of Estée Lauder, she had just joined Lancaster as a senior vice president when Sweetface contacted the company in the fall of 2001. Since she was in charge of American licensing, the query had been forwarded to her office in Paris -- where she jumped on it. "I had come in with the intention of looking for new opportunities for Lancaster," she says. "Jennifer Lopez was definitely on my list. She was getting bigger and bigger every day." Which posed a challenge: If Lancaster took the customary 18 months to bring the fragrance to market, a huge opportunity could slip away. "Okay, here's this woman," Walsh remembers thinking. "She's skyrocketing. She's a dancer, a singer, an actor, and now a fashion designer. She's a movement! So how do we ride that wave and launch when it's at its peak?"

Walsh thought the new fragrance should come out no later than the following September, in time for the 2002 holiday season. To do that, Lancaster would have to start shipping by early July, which meant the fragrance would have to be in production by May. Before production could begin, a glass manufacturer had to create the tooling that would be used to make the bottles, so the design of the bottle had to be pinned down. For that matter, the advertising campaign had to be shot, which couldn't happen until the parties had agreed upon the concept, the packaging, the colors, and the name -- to say nothing of the fragrance itself. Yet as late as December 2001, the two sides had barely begun discussing a licensing agreement. And once the lawyers got involved, Walsh knew it could be months before an agreement was signed.

So, with the support of Coty CEO Bernd Beetz, she took the highly unusual -- and risky -- step of starting work on the product while still negotiating for its rights. It was a huge gamble, and whether it paid off would depend, first and foremost, on Jennifer Lopez. If she were difficult to work with, the process would be a nightmare, and they would probably miss their deadline. If she were businesslike, then they'd have a shot at coming in on time.

In late December 2001, Walsh, understandably apprehensive, showed up for her first meeting with Lopez at the Four Seasons Hotel in Milan. "I went to her hotel room, and she came out in a bathrobe," Walsh recalls. "We shook hands, and I said, 'Jennifer, you know, I'm here to talk to you about developing your fragrance.' She said, 'Oh, great! Smell me."

The meeting lasted for about two hours. Also in attendance were Sweetface's head of licensing, Chip Rosen, and Lopez's ever-present manager, Medina. Much of the discussion centered on the bottle. Walsh had brought drawings of some designs, none of which Lopez liked. Walsh suggested that Lopez walk around the hotel suite and pick out objects -- a light fixture, a vase -- whose shapes appealed to her. About half an hour later, Walsh was able to sit down and sketch a new shape based on Lopez's comments and observations. "That's it," Lopez said. "That's the bottle." It was, many people later noted, a shape that bore a striking resemblance to Lopez's own famous figure.