Welcome to a new week! Let’s see where we will be at the end of the coming days. I got another bunch of hyacinths, all pink, and smelling rather differently compared to the blue ones I got two weeks ago. They are much less metallic but rather powdery sweet, with a spicy undertone and only little green tonalities. Actually, very little green here. And their scent changes. I got them on Saturday, all buds still closed. They did not smell at all. Almost. Now they are in full bloom and the scent has changed from yesterday’s gourmand like sweetness to a more stingy, a bit more belligerent variant.
No wonder, I fooled around a bit yesterday, circling the flowers so to say, squeezing in a moment with these flowers and a few fragrant raw materials, such as phenylpropanol, lilial, phenylpropanal and roses et al. Phenylpropanal is interesting as you find it naturally in hyacinth, lilac, and cinnamon bark. It smells fresh, green, metallic, aggressive and is super potent. I think I will use about 0.1% in the diluted fragrance. Much more you do not want to put in there, I think. Well, I guess it is a question of how much of metallic green you like.
And somewhere in between, I circled the flowers with my i-pad, sketching one little flower using the drawing app, observing its symmetry, and how it is broken, the colors, the shapes.
Thus, yesterday was very busy, in all possible ways, and it saw us getting more air du désert marocain ready for bottling today. But I managed to do the weekly jogging including some hard core brand and numbers thinking, in preparation for this week’s meetings. There, at the meetings, we will try to come up with a master plan for the next 1-2 years. I need to come up with some core decisions like how many scents more do I want. And when. And in what kind of bottles. And for what price. For whom. All very good questions. Right now, I worry about the number of scents that I have not published. I have a couple of colognes ready, two three other fragrances sit in Excel, and I simply have not decided what to do with them. If I was a painter it would be simple: Just hang the paintings up, in a gallery, or another public place and share them. Scents are different. A whole factory has to be turned on in order to share a new creation. And once it is out, there is an expectation that it will always smell the same, look the same, cost the same and be available all the time.
And while everyone seems to be interested in new fragrances, asking for more, and more new scents, everybody seems to complain about too many fragrances appearing and too little time to follow what’s new. Not easy, right?
These, and other questions such as profitability, and volumes and work load will be on the table tomorrow.
Ultimately, the goal is to continue building an environment that allows being creative without having to compromise too much.
Today’s picture: Another shot taken yesterday, of the hyacinth flowers. Their waxy flowers are almost translucent in bright sunlight.
Dear Andy, it would be interesting to learn, at least very shortly that itself represent fragrances sitting in Excel
I don’t represent, as you can live in such prompt rate?
I for example, only in a current of the whole week have completely realized have read and have understood, all parties and development PENTACHORD Verdant.
Thanks you, created such fine and optimistical fragrance. And you and all readers a blog – Have fine day!
Fragrant greetings, Vladimir
Well , you see, Vladimir, I don’t do much else than think PERFUMES, except maybe design, packaging, drawing and cooking. But then, I guess I think perfumes, sort of in a batch job way… Have a nice evening!
While all these aspects need to be considered and decided to determine your way forward, I hope that you can find this process challenging, but interesting. Don’t let it spoil your pleasure to play around with scents to get the desired inspiration that you equally will need to move forward. You need to determine a healthy proportion between business consideration and a space for artistic freedom to complement this. Best wishes to you.
“And once it is out, there is an expectation that it will always smell the same, look the same, cost the same and be available all the time.”
Hi Andy. I find the part about smelling the same interesting.
Do you often reformulate your perfumes, or maybe are you forced to reformulate because of sourcing materials?
Is it because you use a lot of naturals and less synthetics?
I have to say that my sample of l’Air du Desert Marocain, which was filled from the old style of bottles, seems to smell different compared to the perfume in the new blue bottles. Is there a noticable difference, or is it me?
Have a great week.
Oh, S.D. Be
i do not reformulate. There is one exception: Le Maroc pour elle ,where I had to change some things due to legislation. Especially the air du désert marocain is 100% identical to the original formula. Any difference is in the nose of the observer or due to maturation, storage or slight variations in raw material qualities. As long as possible I will not touch the formula of air du désert marocain.
Of course, a sample vial cannot be compared to a larger flacon. …
I hope this helps.
This helped me a lot, thank you.
I ordered a sample a while ago from
http://www.ausliebezumduft.de/
It’s a hand decanted spray sample, which probably explains the difference.
That sample blew me away and I decided to go for a bottle.
The weird thing is that the sample seemed to be “better” (for me)… which made me think it was reformulated. It was “softer” to the nose… but still lasted over 24 hours. With the perfume in the blue bottle, the opening is so strong and powerful, almost brutal for my nose.
It causes instant nose fatigue for me, while people around me smell it very clearly. I can barely catch a whiff of it after application. Do you have a manual on how to apply this? lol… I wanted to ask this question for a long time but I didn’t dare to do it since I don’t want to offend you or anything, which I probably did now, but I needed clearance about this. Thank you so much for your answer, and my apologies since the answer was right in front of me…
Andy, you say: “A whole factory has to be turned on in order to share a new creation.” Is it possible to manually produce some test batches, sell samples and decide on the future steps based on the testers’ reaction? Correct me if I’m wrong, but your customers currently are mostly people who are interested in the niche sector of the perfume market, so bloggers’, facebook and twitter users’ opinions should be representative enough of “your” market.
Fragrant greetings, Undina
actually, there is a good point. My client base has changed a lot. And it has grown out the bloggers, facebook and twitter crowd. I could, if I wanted, send samples out in small batches to share with some perfume lovers. But it brings me into big troubles. The majority of my perfume loving clients are not bloggers, facebook and twitter users that are or can get in touch with me directly. But independent of that: Sharing scents is not easy for logistics reasons.
Think Italy, where I cannot ship directly, but have so many clients. Think Russia, where I need import channels, too.
Another thing. It is unfortunately, not possible to just make a few samples, share them and then stop sharing the scent after -let’s say- 100 samples. My mail box would be flooded and I would make a lot of perfume lovers angry because the could not get the samples.
And finally, I was actually talking about sharing a scent. Not testing it. I share a picture by just publishing it online. I cannot simply share a scent with hundreds of peoples. There is always a physical barrier that needs to be produced and sent out.
You are one of very few perfumers who create w/ heart and soul FIRST, so whatever you dream up is most welcome and direly NEEDED – therefore there can never be enough scents on the TAUER TIMELINE!!
Stevie Ray Vaughn`s “Tick Tock, Tick Tock – Time is Slippin` Away“!!
S.D. BE, I’m sure the difference you experience between them are coincidental. I haven’t noticed any difference between sample and bottle. I don’t know what a manual would give you that you couldn’t find out through a little experimenting. Of course different perfumes benefit from different types of use, but this is also subject to personal opinion. Have you tried spraying it very high upward and let it “rain” down on you? Might soften it up a bit. It would be a shame if you weren’t to enjoy such a wonderful creation. Hope you will figure it out!
Thank you Pär for the tip, I will try this soon.
The topnotes feel like a Mike Tyson uppercut to my nose.
Hello…I am of the school that less can be more. Some of the lines that I like have released so many that I am starting to look elsewhere. On top of that, there is all this business about exclusive non-export lines, so on and so forth that can come across as purely a marketing ploy.
I think it is great that you hesitate about sending out a creation into the world. It is a costly undertaking and you are right about the sampling issue. An FYI, I am not a customer from the blogosphere and I do not tweet. There is one site that provides solid information about the history, creation, materials etc. related to fragrance which I appreciate very much. But that is about it.