French luxury house Lalique has named airline KLM as its ‘Best Travel Retail Partner 2015’ in a newly-created award to acknowledge professionalism in the duty free and travel retail channel.

DF&TR – and specifically inflight sales – are a growing retail platform for high-end glass and crystal producer Lalique, particularly its fragrance division. Since 2008, Lalique has been owned by Art & Fragrance, a Swiss company headed by business entrepreneur Silvio Denz,

According to the company the new award, which consists of the crystal edition of Lalique’s best-selling line L’Amour Lalique “was created to reward both the business performance of the partnership as well as the quality of the working relationship”.

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Lalique says: “KLM particularly stood out for their inflight sales catalogue with its fresh presentation and clean design, the quality and passion of the sales team, training of the cabin crew and the clarity and reliability of the sales information provided.

“The overall ease of doing business from product delivery to final presentation and the full involvement of all staff to proactively promote the brand, including joint product development, was extremely impressive.”

David Ríos, Head of Sales & Export for Lalique Parfums, says: “We put in motion our strategic travel retail plan less than two years ago. KLM have exceeded our expectations, with the speed and quality of results we obtained.”

Retail buyer at KLM, Ivon Mersmans, adds: “We see this reward as an acknowledgement that our strategy is working and we look forward to our future collaboration with the Lalique brand.”