The Scent Of A Winner

The all-new Muhammad Ali brand of fragrances celebrates the pugilist’s illustrious life.

- Varun Godinho

MUHAMMAD ALI WAS one of those rare breeds of sportsmen who gave people of varied nationalities, cultural backgrounds, political slants and religious beliefs a reason to root for him. He was something to everyone.

Although he fought his last match in 1981, over three-and-a-half-decades later, his name still evokes vivid memories. For some that memory is of him standing over a vanquished Sonny Liston, who he knocked out in the first round to secure the World Heavyweight Championship in 1965, while for others it might be any one of those numerous memorable quotes that are rehashed and used in pop culture references even today.

Why is Muhammad Ali still one of the greatest of all time? Robert Hatiefi, the CEO of Muhammad Ali Fragrances, has an explanation. “Muhammad Ali was not only a celebrity, he was a brand.”

Hatiefi is a master of branding and marketing having developed Lamborghini’s first mobile phone and worked in advisory capacities at some of the world’s biggest brands including Jaguar, Rolls-Royce and TAG Heuer.

But a few years ago he decided to move beyond the world of techno-luxury and into fragrances. “The global fragrance industry globally is worth about $40bn. Of this, the celebrity fragrance market is 10-15 percent of the overall industry but is declining because if you take for example someone like Michael Jordan, his name sells a few 100 million of sales of eau de colognes and eau de perfumes in the US, but you won’t find a single bottle of perfume here.”