Vasiliy Ivanov

The brand is named after the town where R. J. Reynolds started his business which is Winston-Salem, North Carolina. As of 2017, Winston has the seventh-highest U.S. market share (2 percent) of all cigarette brands, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Maxwell Report.

This market share has been falling since 2003, when it peaked at 3.92 percent, although Winston has consistently been in the top 10 cigarette brands by U.S. market share since 2001, according to data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Household Survey on Drug Abuse.

History

Winston was introduced in 1954 by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and quickly became one of the top-selling cigarette brands, using the slogan "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should". It became the number one cigarette sold in the world by 1966, a position it held until 1972 when Marlboro overtook the brand.

In the 1980s, Winston was the most favored brand in Puerto Rico, thanks to their advertising slogan "Winston y Puerto Rico: No hay nada mejor" (Winston and Puerto Rico: There is nothing better).

Winston then became the #2 cigarette, a position it continues to maintain today under ownership of Japan Tobacco outside of the U.S. while the American version of the brand has faced steadily declining sales, dropping to sixth place by 2005 in the last national survey. The American version of Winston is also known for its more recent claim of becoming additive-free in the late 1990s. This in turn led to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission requiring Winston to clarify subsequent advertisements that the lack of additives did not result in a safer cigarette.

In 1999, R.J. Reynolds was spun off from RJR Nabisco and subsequently sold its non-U.S. operations to Japan Tobacco.

On July 15, 2014, Reynolds American (R.J. Reynolds parent company) agreed to purchase the Lorillard Tobacco Company for $27.4 billion and as a result, (to alleviate antitrust concerns) Winston, along with the Kool, Maverick, and Salem cigarette brands, was sold to Imperial Tobacco for $7.1 billion.

On June 12, 2015, Reynolds American and Lorillard completed their merger and Winston officially fell under ownership of Imperial tobacco spinoff ITG brands.

Its founder and owner is the world-famous perfume virtuoso – Pierre Montale. Before the creation of his company, he worked in the cities of Qatar and Dubai in Saudi Arabia. There he worked as a creator of personal perfumes for the royal family, noblemen, celebrities, and bridesmaids. Of course, these perfumes do not bear the brand logo because they are named after their owners. The first scent that Pierre created there did not suit his taste, but his wife fell in love with it. That gave him significant confidence and motivation boost to continue his work. People that live in the West adore oriental and woody aromas, and that’s why most of the perfumes he has made for them contain the aromatic notes of agarwood, cedar, amber, balsam, musk and other similar scents.

The history of the brand

When Pierre became the master of the Western fragrances, he decided to expand his business and to show his skills in Europe. In 2003 he moved to Paris – the capital of high fashion. There he founded his company and named it after him. In 2005 the company released its first collection of perfumes, which won the hearts of customers and were quickly sold out. The fragrances in the debut collection are:

– the unisex aromas – Sweet Oriental Dream, Royal Aoud, Orient Extreme, Intense Tiare, Attar, and Aoud Lime.

– the women scents – Aoud Rose Petals and Powder Flowers.

– the men fragrance – Wood and Spices.

Each of these fragrances has a unique aroma and the collection made an incredibly strong start on the market. Pierre Montale participates in the creation of each of his perfumes and thanks to his skills; the company is achieving a tremendous success every day. One of the key factors for Montale’s success is that they use only high – quality ingredients for the creation of perfumes, which makes their scent so real, dense and long-lasting.

The successful companies often create an unwanted sense of envy in other people in the industry. It usually happens to a company to get unwanted detractors, which sabotage the business or to falsify its products. Unfortunately, this happened to Montale’s company too. An anonymous person created a factory in Dubai, in which he started a perfume production with the Montale’s logo and bottle, but with very poor scent quality. The fragrances were disappointing, and the Montale’s company lost some of its customers but after a while, the identity of that man was revealed, and in 2013 he bankrupted. The factory has produced a massive amount of fake perfumes that still can be found in today’s market. On the packaging of the original fragrances is written 68, rue Pierre Charron or 26, Place Vendome. At the bottom of the cellophane on the packaging is the country code that indicates where the perfume was produced. This makes it easy to see if the scent is original because everything different than the above is fake.

The success of the company grows steadily and from 2005 until now (2018) 126 perfumes have been launched on the market. The brand follows the world marketing requirements and releases at least nine new flavours each year. Montale’s goal is to maintain the interest and the love of its customers by fully satisfying their perfume needs and always surprising them with a new scent. Some of the Montale’s most famous perfumes are Black Aoud, Aoud Leather, Dark Aoud, Black Musk, Aoud Musk and Attar. Each of them has an enchanting aroma and long-lasting scent that can’t be forgotten.

As of November 2020, it ranks second in terms of turnover in its segment. The head office is located in Yekaterinburg.

In Moscow, the company is developing the store format under the AppleBox brand. Their area is 300-500 m² against 1500 m² for the original format. The first AppleBox store opened in December 2019 . The second one opened in October 2020. The AppleBox format works in the sleeping areas of Moscow, and will occupy premises in former cinemas converted into regional centers - Angara, Orbita, Budapest and others.

The Golden Apple owns Flacon, a magazine and online publication dedicated to the beauty industry and cosmetic innovations. In 2018, Alena Doletskaya , former editor-in-chief of Russian Vogue and Interview , became the magazine's publisher.

History:

In 1996, the first 40 m² store was opened in Yekaterinburg. The first store in a "beauty supermarket" format was opened in 2004.

Gold Apple opened its first store in Moscow in 2017 and in Saint Petersburg in 2019. At July 2021, the chain has 19 stores in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Perm, Rostov-on-Don, Volgograd, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk, Kazan, Khabarovsk, Saratov and Samara, and an online store in Belarus. July 9, 2021 the first retail store opened outside of Russia, in Minsk, Belarus. The average selling space of supermarkets in Russia is 1,500 m². In December 2021, the company plans to open a 2,500 m² flagship store in the Neglinnaya Galereya mall in the city center of Moscow.

At July 2021, there were 23 stores in the chain.

In 2018, the company opened an online store. In the fall of 2020, the online store features were added to Gold Apple's mobile app. The online store offers more than 60 thousand products from 1,500 brands, including 84 exclusive brands and brands with narrow distribution.

In 2019, the company's revenue was 16.8 billion rubles. Net profit was just over 124 million rubles. According to the results of 2020, the revenue of Gold Apple increased by half and reached 22.4 billion rubles. Net profit was 216.8 million rubles. Gold Apple is outperforming its competitors by revenue per square meter. At the end of 2021 the share of online sales is 30% of the company's total revenue.