Welcome to a perfumer's blog on perfumery

with this post we say bye bye for the weekend.

Wishing you a great time and see you soon again….

Enjoy!

a rose in July 2010

I hit the road in a minute or two to visit a photographer and to show my two flacons, 50 and 30 ml for a shooting in a few weeks.

The studio is on the other side of town, thus I have to hurry. Initially, I thought I could save some money there and do it myself, but I got convinced and feel sure now that it is sure worth spending some money to get pictures done. The professional way, which means great lighting, texture, nice colors and no need to work extensively with photoshop….

While sitting together with my photography guru: Here’s some reading for you.

A lovely review on the rose vermeille by Carol (another winner of my draw) on her blog “Muse in wodden shoes”-> click here.

And a great review of Le Maroc pour elle and a bit on Tauer by Jo Fairley on her blog and magazine The Scent Critic -> click here.

Enjoy!

Picture: a photo camera…

I got today, HURRAY!, the new flacons delivered from France, for the Rose chyprée and Rose vermeille. These two fragrances will go into the new flacon by autumn (about) and I will change the format from 15 ml to 30 ml. I know: Some will not like the idea that I move away from my 15 ml format. Others will love it. There are a few reasons for it: First the 15 ml flacon does not fit into my brand appearance and packaging. It is not accepted by a few point of sales, and I had a lot of clients buying two flacons instead of one, because 15 ml was too little for them.

I guess 30 ml will do fine.
Having discussed with the W.-factor whether or not we should show the new flacon here already, or rather wait… the W.-factor recommended not to sell the fish before I caught it…. thus: No pictures of the flacon. But you know its style already: 5 angles ;-)

Thus, this is very, very good.

The challenge in the coming weeks: Getting stock done for Pitti fragrance exhibition and beyond, and making sure that my perfume loving friends understand and find the many flowers that are blooming these days on tauer land. For this, my branding gurus and me will work on the communication of the brand. Exciting!

Ahhh… and before I forget: Finishing the website. I want it to go live some when next week.
  Picture: A patch of flowers, seen in the mountains above Adelboden, June 2010.

ok.

The news is out. Now Smell This was fast… super sonic fast! Which is good.

Carillon pour un ange, my green floral, formerly known during development phase as Gabriel, is exclusively available on Tauer and Luckyscent. We are doing a pre-launch together. The pre-launch phase will for sure take until spring 2011. Then, then, then… we might see the Carillon pour un ange in another flacon.

I just got the call from customs: The new flacons are here, for the “Une Rose Vermeille” and the “Rose Chypree”. I will present these two roses both in  a new flacon for the first time during Pitti in Florence, September  10-12 which is utterly exciting. As I am also launching the Eau d’épices in my standard 50 ml format in autumn 2010: We decided that I rather do a pre-launch phase with the Carillon pour un ange, allowing me to slowly go where I want to. In this pre-launch phase, there will be sort of a mix of old and new: New sample format for instance, but an old flacon format.
Sort of…

Thus, the Carillon pour un ange, will be sold by me and the lucky guys, in the 15 ml flacon, as eau de parfum riche.

“what’s that?” , you might ask. Yep, good question…. that’s my cliffhanger for tomorrow’s post. I recess into deep lily of the valley immersion now and make those samples. Cheers to you!
Picture: A spray sample of the Carillon pour un ange.

The last few days were -except for a jogging break and a  post-jogging exhaustion- very busy. Sort of in a row busy. But I am looking forward to closing this last chapter (second last) of my brand redesign.
I am working these days on the new website and the shop. I had no idea how many countries there exist, waiting to get grouped into shipping classes. And due to the Swiss postal system I needed to come up with four weights classes per country. A large excel did the job and finally, it looks as if I can charge true shipment charges in Switzerland and Europe with or without registered mail depending on the country. So far, I used kind of a flat shipment rate, based on the rate to ship parcels to the US which did not really do justice to the Europeans.
The new system to which I am switching in a couple of days will be Magento. Byebye virtuemart. Unfortunately, all user information stays in virtuemart and we will not migrate these data. Thus, we basically all start from scratch again. And you know what? I like the idea.

I could restart my entire life every second year. Sort of….

Picture: a Swiss alp in summer 2010. As soon as the web story is over, you will find me up there again.

when traveling Brittany in France in 2008, we passed by this little village, on a little river, where, about 65 years ago, the allied forces led by the US fought their way into Europe. One of many little villages waited  to be freed by the US because Europe was too weak to fight off its cancer on its own and get rid of its torturers.
Happy birthday to a great nation from Europe.
Enjoy your forth of July!

Picture: Memorial of an US soldier uploaded by Andy.

Here is a little lavender flower for your weekend. It blooms these days in 30 °C in Zurich. Now, it is summer.
Enjoy!

Picture: lavender summer 2010, seen in our little jungle garden.

Because it is just so nice and yummy to read:

Here is a lovely  review of the “une rose vermeille”. One of the samples that I gave away in the latest draw ended up on a blogger’s desk: Here is the post on roses and macarons on the blog Scent of the Day …click here->.

Enjoy!

During the interview rounds on Tuesday, things got almost out of control at one point when we started talking about rabbits.

You can read more on the rabbit situation during this interview on BritishBeautyBlogger.com … click here->. (Actually, it is a perfect condensation of my last 6 years. Great reading!)
I do not know how it happened, but we ended up talking about rabbits, our rabbits, the rabbits that I had at home in the past. These days, we live in a rabbit free zone, but back then, 15 years ago, the rabbit sort of dominated our house. Now it is perfumery that is dominating everything.

 Picture: bunny in the house

Anyhow, so we started talking rabbits and what seems unprofessional actually is very funny. And this is what makes the difference. I was asked by one of the interviewers what actually makes the difference between someone who started like I did (and a few others) and …well: The perfumer studying and later doing things for a house or a company. I said something like “I could afford to come up with perfumes because it was fun, and actually, I can still pretty much do what I like. And because I like to have fun, it shines through my compositions and my brand.” Something like that I said and it is true. Having fun while doing what you do is key.  But next to having fun, there are some serious lines to always keep in mind. Like budgets. No money, less fun.
Michael, the professional PR supporter, having the time line under control, had to stop us and probably he was right. When I start talking rabbits, there is no end. Below you see a scanned picture of my first rabbit. A true fighter, without fear, she was attacking everybody who came too close to her and her beloved Andy. She was incredibly territorial and accepted only us on planet earth. The missing paper on the edges is also an effect of having bunnies in your house because bunnies munch on about everything.

I am back! London was great and quite an experience in hot summer weather, with Linden trees all in bloom in Hyde park, where I was Sunday for my 90 minutes jogging.

Picture: Linden blossom, 10 am in Hyde park, June 27 2010.

Talking Linden blossom: The only shopping damage in London was Joe Malone’s “French Lime Blossom Cologne”, in an economical 30 ml flacon which I picked although the cutest sales rep imaginable kept on insisting that the large size would be such a great deal. There is this wonderful Linden blossom chord in it that I liked a lot. I got Joe’s flacon at Harrods because I was there cruising the 5th floor dark perfume tunnel, with some diamonds lighting up. Up there it felt a bit like at home, in one of the endless Swiss tunnels. Anyhow, so I had to tell the sales agent in the basement’s regular perfume department that I did not care too much about actually wearing this fragrance, but that I rather like to smell it in small amounts on paper, which sort of annoyed him and me. It did not seemed right for Harrods. So did the piles of 50% off and 60% off perfumes in the big perfume hall at the basement. I cannot get accustomed to sales when it comes to perfumes. …Especially in Harrods.

Talking Harrods: I was in Claridges….. click here for pictures of the hotel. But I had to disappoint my interviewing partner yesterday, when she asked me whether I stay in the hotel. We met in the hotel lobby for a quick interview before I hit the plane. The lobby is sort of understated, but the breakfast room looks gorgeous. And the Claridge staff is so used to upper class and the rich and beautiful that they have developed some sort of tolerance for folks like me. Thus, there was me waiting there for 15 minutes, trying to be over punctual, looking at some pictures of stars et al in the hotel, taking a seat into what looked like an ordinary leather arm chair:

Sinking into nothingness.

The leather was soft and I felt like being digested by this strange thing from a world where I usually do not find myself: The world of the rich. I sank into leathery coziness, and realized than in 25 years from now, I would not be able to get up and out  of the chair by myself anymore. But then, I figured it is nice to end your life in an arm chair at Claridges. But before I could engage into deep mode thinking about my age and actually being tired from the city and by the interviews, there she was, my interviewer, and we did another shapshot of what it is like to be a perfumer…

Cheers to you!

(Picture: A pub on an evening, a place where I felt very much at home)