Chrissy Fichtl started home fragrance brand Apotheke in her Brooklyn apartment back in 2012. A decade later, the brand lines the shelves of upscale boutiques and is on hand for guests in more than 100,000 hotel rooms in destinations as far-flung as Cairo and Nashville.
The placement in hotels has been explosive for Apotheke's growth, Fitchl told Bloomberg, estimating that around 20% of soap sales come from these partnerships. But it's not been growth she's had to struggle particularly hard for.
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"I'm not pitching hotels. I'm not making product and shipping it and fulfilling it monthly and keeping up with all of the stock," Fichtl said.
Instead, much of that gruntwork has fallen to John Hunter, founder of Hunter Amenities International Ltd., and his team.
The Hunter Amenities story
Hunter, who's established a reputation as the godfather of amenities, founded his namesake company 44 years ago. The business works as a matchmaker, connecting cosmetics, fragrance, and lifestyle brands with airlines, hotels, cruise ships, and gyms that provide them to guests as a part of their stay.
"If you're in even 50,000 rooms, you'll have 4 or 5 million guest impressions on your brand every year," he told Bloomberg.
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Becoming an amenities kingmaker wasn't always the plan for Hunter. Initially, he told Bloomberg, he was interested in launching his own line of toiletry vending machines. When that venture didn't take off, he pivoted, partnering with airlines that wanted small branded toiletry items to offer travelers mid-flight.
Today, Hunter Amenities distributes 45 brands in more than 100 countries, bringing in an annual revenue of more than $300 million, Bloomberg reports.
The Hunter Amenities touch
One of Hunter Amenities’ earliest success stories was launching Bliss products in W Hotels back in 2004. The pairing was "one of those iconic ones where people said, ‘I stay at the W, I love the Bliss products,'" Fitch told Bloomberg. "The first thing out of their mouth [was that they] loved the amenities."
Hunter says that when scouting for brands to partner with, the company most often looks for unique ingredients, interesting stories and brand identities, and growing social media presences.
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While brands don't always earn much up front – only about 5% to 6% of the total sale, according to Bloomberg – the deals brokered by Hunter Amenities often have outsized returns. Guests get the opportunity to sample a product during their stay, something Hunter calls "tryvertising," and, if they like it, will buy it for their own spaces once they return home.
Skincare company Beekman 1802 told Bloomberg that launching in hotels has been a key piece of its growth strategy. Nearly a decade ago, hotel chain Andaz started using one of Beekman's scents, Fresh Air, in its rooms. Today, Beekman uses that same scent in a number of its products and has sold it to other companies like Princess Cruise Lines and Etihad Airlines.
Brent Ridge, a co-founder of Beekman 1802, says it's hard to nail down exactly how much revenue the Hunter Amenities deals have brought in, but he does point out that Fresh Air is now one of the company's best sellers.
"You're in front of the customer in a very intimate setting where you have no other competition," Ridge told Bloomberg, explaining why these partnerships work so well. "That's a really hard thing to find."
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