‘Gregorys’ a Hit With Grandmas : Cologne for Boys Evokes Manly Scents
Once there were little boys who wouldn’t take baths. Now there are little boys who wear cologne.
At least that is Randy Perini’s hope. He has developed Gregorys, a cologne for “upwardly mobile 3-to-10-year-olds” that he is marketing to the well-groomed kindergartener.
And as for the boys who think cologne is for sissies, Perini does not remember it that way. He remembers wearing his father’s Old Spice as a treat on special occasions. In doing research to develop Gregorys, he said, he found that “in every situation, children are using their parent’s colognes.”
Andrew Alvarez, 8, disagreed. When he took a whiff of Gregorys, which costs $15.50 for less than an ounce, in a children’s clothing department, he held his nose.
Rejected by 8-Year-Old
“Too strong,” he said. “It smells like what my father wears.”
Chandler Webber, also 8, belongs to the other school of thought. He dismisses classmates who might wear cologne as sissies.
“I would think they were a sissy, because they would be acting like a girl if they wore a perfume that smells like a girl.”
The pitchman for the first upscale cologne for boys is Perini’s 3-year-old nephew, Gregory Thomas, a suave young man in a “Miami Vice” outfit and Italian sandals who poses in the ads with a miniature Mercedes-Benz 500SL before a sunset over Biscayne Bay.
Gregory, who attends nursery school in suburban Miami Shores, also plays tennis, goes yachting and treats a young lady--appropriately dressed in white lace and pearls--to an ice cream sundae in photographs accompanying the bottle.
Cindy Prather, director of publicity for Burdines, the Florida department store chain where Gregorys first appeared recently, says boys who wear cologne are emulating their fathers:
‘Exclusively for Kids’
“It’s something exclusively designed for kids, and they know Daddy can’t use it,” she said.
The cologne, which Perini describes as a blend of vetiver with a fresh citrus accord of lemon and bergamot and a delicate nuance of lavender, is also available from I. Magnin of California, Bullocks of Los Angeles, Macy’s in Atlanta and Ivey’s of North Carolina.
At the Burdines branch in the affluent Miami suburb of Kendall, salesman Jose Lopez said he sells six or seven bottles a day, mostly to parents and relatives buying the cologne as a present.
Perini, who founded Miami-based Gregorys International to market the cologne, said the idea came to him when his wife, who was doing fragrance modeling, noticed that boys and girls came up to her and asked for samples of cologne.
Perini concedes that he is taking a business gamble with a cologne for boys.
“I could have gone with little girls first and had a much greater response, but I didn’t want to lose Gregory. He is just at that age and he has that look. Plenty of grandmothers and aunts see that little face, and they want to buy the cologne,” he said.
