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Right now, I am fiddling with some English text that I prepared in broken English for my partners in arms, id est my sales channels. For my German friends, such as Georg Wuchsa, I want to send a few its and bits about the rose chyprée in German. In the end it is my mother tongue. Thus, it shouldn’t be too difficult, right? But then….I speak a dialect, a rough version that Germans often do not understand because it is quite different.

And I think, somehow, German is not a perfume language.

What I come up with does not sound right. Somehow German is more difficult for me. I guess this is because I understand it ;-)

Anyhow. Here is the official statement in English:
Rose chyprée will ship by July 1 2009 from my shop, and hopefully a few other shops on this planet. Preorders will be possible in the course of May.

I need the time to allow my sales channels to get their specimens, evaluate it, and decide whether they want it. And if so: I want them to be able to sell it when I am live with it…to be fair. Thus, preparing parcels for my point of sales today and translating for my German friends. And later: fiddling around with individually wrapped covers for the rose chyprée. These PE wrapped covers are a pain; the wrapping PE bags are flying everywhere because of electrostatics, but they protect from scratches…

Picture: Individually wrapped covers

Once I got home from my Dilbert meeting, I made a few calls and then samples because one of the calls was with the Zurich shop. Being sold out of a few fragrances, bottles and samples, we arranged an urgent emergency delivery later in the evening. Thus, before turning on the sample production machine, we talked. About roses. And we realized that the next fragrance must have a name that sets it apart. Things get confusing with all the incenses and the roses lately.

Looking back, I could have baptized the rose chyprée as rosa negra.

Fitting, because is is a dark rose.

Some of you may have guessed by now where I am heading to. yes. The Rosa Negra blog where you can find today the English original and Portugese translation of Cristina’s and mine chat and exchange. My thoughts are sometimes a touch lengthy. But then: I am so happy I was given space and you will see that Cristina and me wonder about some issues. Like banalization, inspiration and creation.
And here is finally the link to our conversation. Enjoy!

Picture:
Une rosa negra (photoshop)

That was a very busy weekend, with lots of samples and Rose chyprée bottles, interrupted by jogging and orchids and this brings me right to Twitter, from where I rediscovered Nathan’s blog. I was there once, but lost track somehow. So I read a few reviews there (thank you!) and got into the bottle and packaging discussions. Not much to add there, except for the fact that Nathan is right, of course, and that gradually we will change. Gradually because I am spending too many weekends with non-weekend stuff such as making perfume; did a new batch of air on Saturday., this one is for the X-mas season that starts September for me, which is somewhat strange, thinking X-mas when all the tulips are blooming and the lilac sends its perfume to bees and perfumers. Anyhow….
The new box and inlay discussed last week will help. Next we might have to do something with the stickers, maybe. Ah…. I need more time on this planet. And a higher margin to pay folks doing the samples. But this is another issue. Back to packing the roses…
The Rose chyprée bottle… well. The sticker is simpler and easier to apply. This helps. And the pumps and the cover come individually wrapped which protects them. But the invidivual wrapping is a pain. It is a fine PE bag where every cover sits in. And they charge up, electrostatically, and fly everywhere, and the cover won’t get out easily.
Anyhow, after having bottled, and labeled, and packed and wrapped my first 100 bottles, and even before reading Nathan’s comment, I started worrying whether I might not better wrap the packed box with some sort of protective foil, because I can see what happens out there with the white paper…

Maybe I will simply put the packed rose chyprée into a PE bag.

Now: Off for two days business meeting (yep…part of my 3 day office job) to earn my $ to keep me going. Yes: Think Dilbert.

Picture: Packed Rose chyprée

Yesterday, I visited a packaging exhibition, featuring everything from automatic packaging large scale, like for instance of tomatoes soup, almost like in Tati’s “mon oncle”…tomatoes in on one side and filled pouches out on the other side. Cool stuff!

All the way down to what I need, like digiprint labels for boxes or bottles. Digitally printed because I have lot sizes below 1000 pieces. And I can tell you: Amazing what modern digital printing technology can produce in effects (gold! , silver!, patterns!) and for what price. Watch out for Andy falling in love with gold. A good idea these days anyhow.
And of course: Boxes…You can expect a few posts on boxes in the coming weeks/months, as I found what I was looking for. An alternative to my box that is a touch better in terms of haptic quality and overall aesthetics, with an inlay that is fitting my bottle, that needs less work and time to produce and that reflects the quality of my fragrances in a better way. Call it a gentle face lift. I will get a quote in the next weeks.

And I finally met the man behind my bottle. He came from Vienna for this exhibition and I know now where my bottles and sample vials come from: Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain, Czech Republic. A true European assembly, put together and filled and packed in the heart of Europe.

Yep. And with this picture below I wish you a lovely day and a nice weekend. It shows you a few bottles of the Rose chyprée, with a bag of individually wrapped pumps in the back. This is what I do now….

I am drinking my black eau après lit (coffee) and look very much forward to packaging et al. (the packaging exhibition). And hopefully, I will have a touch more time to comment back later. To all of you who write me back on this blog: I appreciate a lot and read your comments and discussions with greatest pleasure.
And I look back, still very excited, to yesterday when I was visiting the best perfumery in Switzerland: Osswald in Zurich. Personally invited by Mr. Abt, whom you can see in the editorial section of their journal, I sneaked off the office job and joined in, the shiny world of THE perfume house: La maison Guerlain
Meeting with their fragrance evaluation and development manager, that’s her title on her business card, in reality: Sylvaine is Guerlain in a sense and she is very nice, and open and thus we ended up discussing niche and concepts around nice.

And she has a blog that I read regularly (oups… not on my bloglines list yet… memo to self: Corrective measures needed….).

FinallyI sniffed upwards and downwards through Guerlain’s perfumes that you can only get in Maison Guerlain and a few Guerlain Maison featuring boutiques…. such as Osswald. And I got a present that I appreciated so much: eau de lit. Thank you, Mr. Abt!

Another ride to Berne, from Zurich, through spring wonderland and -on a more general level- through, what would have been to 99% of all human beings that lived before us, the paradise. A paradise with more food than we can possibly eat.  My evening musing yesterday on Yahoo brought me to a page where folks are advised not to eat the 1400 kkal cheese burger.

And guess what. I would probably love my 100 gram fat and almost 3 gr of sodium there! Although there is less to worry about sodium than you’d think, except you have high blood pressure already. If not, clinical studies are not decisive about salt. It might well be that most of us can get a lot of it without having to worry…

Anyhow: It is nice outside on my way to Berne, and we will hit the 20-ies (Celsius again), which is about perfect .

Tomorrow sees me staying in Zurich, visiting a big packaging exhibition; looking for clever alternatives to some packaging details of my line. And hopefully, I will continue producing samples: Rose chyprée, where I started yesterday night and made the first 240 samples, and the rest of the line. We are shipping samples like crazy these days.

Must be the spring sun; bringing back life, recharging our batteries and opening our wallets.

Not to be missed: A full bloom review of the “hyacinth and a mechanic” fragrance aka bottle on a journey scent.

Here, on Michael’s List, aka the wondermongery blog.

Enjoy!

Do you speak Italian?

Well, I don’t. Thus, we did our best in French and English and what I would call Italiano misto when talking to some journalists in Roma and Milano a few weeks ago. Thus, I can only guess what the article in Lux Gallery is all about. I guess they are talking Andy Tauer and Stars…. You find the entire interview here on Lux Gallery.
And more on Tauer you may find since a couple of days on Twitter, too.

Enjoy!

Last week was a week off the regular office job that keeps me busy normally from Monday till Wednesday. Time to build up stocks again: L’air du désert marocain goes fast these days, and somehow I am always running behind But time also to wait….

After three weeks waiting for bottles that will one day hold the “Une rose chyprée”, I am somewhat amazed, and the last days saw me talking to postal hotlines and made me wonder how it is possible in 2009 in Switzerland that  a parcel takes 10 days to go from A to B whereby A-B is 100 miles. And A is the customs  and B is somewhere in Switzerland, but not my place.

And what worries me even more: No one really cares. I guess folks are just happy that the parcel did not get lost altogether. But I have learned something: They scan every parcel. Yep, they do. Hence, the hotline could check in their computer that my name was printed properly on the parcel.
When I was a boy, parcels were transported faster, but without address scanning.

But, at least, the parcel did not get lost. Contrary to the UK, where we have lost a few parcels the last months, and where we had to start shipping perfumes with registered mail only…

Anyhow: I am on my way to the office job, have my bottles in my perfumery room and will start filling them later in the next weeks.

it got late yesterday….

Well, anyhow: The Easter bunny hopped away and left a few happy winners of the give away prices. I have just sent 15 mails and thank you all for participating. For the statistics: 248 filled out the form (and 1 sent a mail), which translates into a chance to win a bottle of 1/25 and 1/50 to win a consolation prize.
Which is ok, I guess.

Less ok is my kitchen. It got late yesterday and cleaning up is what I have to do now. And then we will put some perfume bottles into boxes.

Enjoy your day.