Bic

Société Bic, already the dominant manufacturer of disposable ballpoints and lighters, entered the fragrance market in 1988 with a characteristically utilitarian logic: fine French perfume could be sold at drugstore prices if the bottle were the same injection-moulded plastic as a lighter. The resulting flacons were shaped like Bic's ubiquitous disposable lighters, colour-coded by purpose — Jour in red, Nuit in blue, Homme in black, Sport in green — and priced at roughly five US dollars. The company built a dedicated factory near its bottle plant in Tréport, Normandy, and spent fifteen million dollars on European advertising managed by Young & Rubicam. The pitch was democratic: the world's first fine French perfume available alongside pens and razors at the checkout counter. Despite the marketing investment and the logical fit with Bic's disposable-goods identity, the line failed commercially within a few years. Bic Fragrances remains a footnote in both packaging history and perfume history — an earnest attempt to extend mass-market logic into a category that, at the time, still strongly resisted purely functional positioning. The original flacons are now collected as industrial design curiosities.