marketing and branding

room for new stuff

Today’s picture shows you an ad in front of the local apothecary, that sells perfumes and other stuff, saying “We need room for new stuff: Scents 50% off!”.

Quite honest and typical for the situation these days. The (niche) perfume market is marked these days by an abundance of products and a consumer in retreat.

I was watching “into the wild” yesterday and, having read the book years ago, I was a bit disappointed. But still, the message was there. Before watching the movie, there was time to get annoyed about the storm we faced yesterday, gusty winds, breaking branches of bushes in flowers and shaking trees full of fruits, to the point where the fruits fell off and are wasp food now. It was a bit sad to see the damage, although the damage was very limited as the storm was not too heavy.

Before going to bed, it all fell together. Mother nature is not nice, and we humans are in a constant fight with forces of nature. We shield ourselves by living in houses, cities, by inventing energy slaves, like machines and cars, that protect and nourish us. We build islands of comfort in a hostile environment. And although human beings don’t life peaceful together, not all the time, the network of humans organized in complex structures is our answer to natures storms and indifference. Yet, our society works  like nature. You have storms ravaging through economies and societies and only the strong branches will survive.

In perfumery it means: What is not selling, will fall off the shelves.

Before the storm, I prepared my website for tomorrow, when I -together with many of my retailing partners- will start offering samples of the Gardenia from Sotto la luna. Full size product will be on pre-sales, but as always, I recommend to never ever buy un-sniffed. So there you go: Another scent on the shelves. It will have to proof itself. Perfumery is a business like every business: You have to sell, to compete, to thrive to be better, nicer, bigger, faster. And it is like no other business, with products that can be more than what the eye sees and the nose tells.

So there we go; happy we are, and anxious, and in a certain way indifferent. There is not much that I can do right now anymore. The product is uploaded with pictures in the online shop and I only have to turn the switch from “disabled” to “enabled”.  The Gardenia has to find its place and proof itself.

And I have to come up with the newsletter, probably over the weekend.