Welcome to a perfumer's blog on perfumery

Today I wish you a lovely weekend. Enjoy !

Yesterday, I met with a PR professional. Keeping an eye on what someone once told me: “PR is an excellent way to spend a lot of money with zero effect. But it can be a key factor for success if done right.” OK: I guess the challenge is to do it right. Like everywhere.

Although, you can do things right, perfectly right, and at the same time do it all wrong. Like Apple with the Newton many years ago. A great tool, never owned by myself, but by a friend. Its basics were done right, great technology, but it was too early for this product. People did not understand it.

So we, the PR guru and me, met for a first discussion of values and visions. Public Relations has a somewhat negative image because PR is about communication, and when people communicate they often do net tell the truth at 100%. This is the case in private life and it is true in business. Thus, values are important for me.

In my particular case, I consider it an experiment. I like the idea of communication a bit more aggressively in a variety of media.

Kind of shaking things up a little bit. Exiting niche if you want, because niche is getting bigger, and bigger, and greyer, and growing faster than mainstream and a trap for folks being real. As niche has nothing to do with niche these days. You can expect a bit more thoughts in the next weeks…
Picture: gravel, little natural works of the elements, seen 2008 at the pacific coast.

3 hours, a cup of tea, 1 cup of coffee and a few verbal derailments later:
I managed to print on the new printer.

Test.

Wow ! I am sort of proud…

Hotlanta Linda: Any ideas what goes as song with the picture (the printer and the successful “test”). The labels are not the ones that I will use for the sample lot numbers.

Today,  my glasses broke (again) and as I said yesterday to the w.-factor: “I am ready for new glasses”, this comes in right in time. Sort of. What a strange coincidence. Need to inform my valet, though.
I am ready for new glasses because my eyes changed. And because I want a different style. Thus, we will get a new look in about a week. Until then I ‘ll use my reading glasses to fiddle around nearby objects. The new frame was love on first (blurry) sight. Expensive, though. But then: I sort of care what is in my face.

With my reading glasses, I will make samples today: Lots, lot and lots. First, I want to start pouring samples of the new kid in town, announced for end March/April: Orange Star. I do not have the labels for the new sample design, yet, but I want to make sure that I have the samples vials filled as this is the most time consuming job. Talking labels (again): I ordered another toy… a mid performance, dedicated label printer, that I will use to print lot numbers and sample labels on G01. 00109 Grip PE labels, coming custom-sized to my needs, on roles of 10000 or so. The seller says “The PF8 printers, available in direct thermal (PF8d) or thermal transfer (PF8t) versions, offer compact size, sturdiness, and silent operation, perfect for a variety of applications in retail, office, service industry and healthcare settings.”

I’ll guess we’ll add perfumery settings there.

Picture: Sample vials waiting…

I got my flanging aka crimping machine.

Hand operated, for small to medium number of bottles. Made in Italy, all shiny and fresh. I can’t wait…but need to. The new crimping bottles won’t get in before early March.

And a hint for Stephan: The pump will be in silver.
Photo: The crimping head. This piece will flange the metal on and around the glass rim.

Photo: the handle… you see: It is human operated.

Today, I am all busy writing text and doing calculations. A little bit on the tough side. You know…trying to come up with a plan for the transition phase from the old design Tauer to the new design Tauer. And texting some text for some web pages that should be live since a while.

Tomorrow comes a truck and visits us, coming right away from Austria. With all exciting stuff: Mémorables sized 15 ml bottles, 50 ml bottles of the design that we all know, pumps, more pumps (5000 pieces) for the new design bottle, sample vials, and more samples vials (I think this time I ordered 10000), and:

A  flanging machine for the new bottles!

As the pumps there will be flanging pumps, I will not screw pumps anymore with the new design bottles. Now: “machine” sounds somewhat automatic. Actually, it is not. I figured that a little bit of moving forth and back will do good. Thus, in late March we will flange, and flange, and flange.
But now, we are all excited and worried: we ‘ll getting about 250 kg of material.

I guess this will be our gym program for the week.

Picture: part of an old machine (seen in Joshua National Monument, 2008)

Today, it is my pleasure to share with you another catalog that my tauer limited liability company got.

Clinic-dress and op - style! I guess the folks that sent me the catalog did not full understand what I do, but the more I look at some of the shirts, the more I like them. If shirts make you a doctor….
Ever wondered where they get the white shiny doctor and nurse look from? Want a nice clean green op dress? For sure, not every one has one. You can get it here.
Enjoy!

Picture: OP - STYLE catalog. or: How to enter surgery room dynamically and nicely dressed. Love it!

I have this project of cleaning up my desk. I wanted to do so with the beginning of the new year, but the flu and catching up afterwards was the perfect excuse so far. The desk is an perfumer trial storage place it seems these days. As I run of space, I started using the  shelf next to it for the storage of more bottles. Besides the rose (discussed previously), there are other hot spots: The cistus ladaniferus which is my warm ambra woody orris root “thing”, inspired by resins and oils of cistus. Then there is the the last drop of the gabriel lily of the valley thing, other roses, and a few fragrances where I go real wild.
Bottles have definitely become an important part of my life.

One bottle got lost. The hyacinth and a mechanic scent that I sent on a journey (see here on my website for details) got lost. Someone must have kept it or it got lost while shipping, or someone did not tell the next recipient what to do with it. But it does not matter. The next time I will do things differently, and in the mean time, the idea was sort of copied. Which is a good sign: It tells me that the idea was a good one. I consider this experiment finished.
That’s what I told my web gurus, too when discussing tauer’s new website and shop and blog.

Yes, we will change all this, too.

Actually, I think about the only thing I will not change in April is what is inside my bottles.
Picture: a little corner of my desk. About to change…

A quick update: I am dealing with orders and labels.

For the labels going onto bottles and boxes and samples we have plan, on the way we made sketches like the one below and others. The big unified tauer label theory. Took us more time than coming up with the unified world theory it seems.

And now: I am putting all information into a nice, big excel and then I make a serial letter, picking the individual content elements to make sure that the label printing company knows what to print when where.

Thus, putting the label contents together these moments: Names, volumes, made by,  allergen declarations for the EU, import informations, color informations, languages, warning messages for the world….

a sketch on the way to the unified tauer labels…

Today is dilution day.

The fridge that I bought a while ago is filled with 12.5 liter aluminum cans that hold master stock of a variety of fragrances, including vetiver dance, rêverie au jardin, orange star…and all of them go into dilution today. The goal: Have all fragrances ready for spring. Keeping an eye on stock is the issue of the last and coming weeks. But more on this transition phase later.
And, before pouring drums and barrels with ethanol, I will indulge in diluting my “rose vermeille”, that I talked about last week.

I think I will go for a 17.5 % Vol/Vol eau de parfum concentration. Feel free to translate this into: This is going to be a concentrated eau de parfum, close to perfume strength. But with its airiness I think it will work without suffocation of its wearer. We will see…
Picture: A new batch of 12.5 liter aluminum cans, enabling me to make more stock and store it safely.

Here, in Zurich, it is a grey and rainy day. Yesterday, it was a grey and foggy day. Thus,yesterday, I took a day off and went up, towards the sun, snow hiking. What a treat.

I wish you a lovely Sunday.

Enjoy!
(picture: A mountain close to Arvenbühl, Switzerland, 2010.