Welcome to a perfumer's blog on perfumery

It is the season again; yes, it is autumn, or it feels like it at least. You can sense it in the morning, when waking up in the dark, you feel it in the colours of the first morning light and you are remembered in it when trying to make a deep breath through a swollen nose.
You got it: A cold with associated symptoms affects a perfumer’s well being right now.

Nothing to worry, though: The perfect time to care about long due print stuff, such as a joint flyer of Medieval art&vie, Brahim tours (walking through the Saharan desert with camels, in small groups, three times a year, never did it, but sounds wonderful) and Tauer perfumes. As always: Design by Tauer, corrections by Medieval art&vie. The bottom line of this leporello: All about Morocco; living in Morocco, travelling in Morocco, books and craftmanship, and two perfumes.

It is kind of an experiment, in cross-selling and connecting different potential entry points.

The word Morocco Marokko “al-maghrib” in Maghribi-writing.
© Daniel Reichenbach www.arabische-kalligrafie.ch

Well, Thursday is approaching and in light of all preparatory action we insist on Thursday’s vernissage to become a success! Checking on the leo online dictionnary (which by the way is really good!) vernissage translated to “private view” and “vernissage”; I like “private view”. It fits perfectly with what we aim at.

First and foremost, Thursday evening is a private view of the new fashion collection, made by Basman, which is basically Menachem and Veronika, fashion designers, with lots of sewers in the background, working in Zurich and transforming their ideas into wearable fashion. If you care about the good old times, hippies on the move, back in the 70-ies: Check their website for a picture of the two of them “with flowers in their minds”. I love it!
Times change and nowadays, Menachem looks somewhat different. So does his fashion, (which I really like, otherwise we would not do together what we will do on Thursday) that they will present on Thursday evening to a “private” group of 200 something invited guests in this “private view”. The theme is AN ORIENTAL EVENING. I know that Menachem does a lot and supports actively the peacemaking between Israel and Palestina, having friends on both sides of this frontier and conflict. Thus, a peaceful oriental evening in downtown Zurich, maybe with a wish for those living in this orient who can not enjoy live as we can, because their is war and hatred, on both sides.
There will be oriental food, there will be oriental music, there will be some lectures and there will be a perfumer talking about oriental scents. From time to time, just a few words, a private talk in this “private view”,  because I know: Sniffing is believing. Hence, we invite our private view guests to try my perfumes and to try some of the naturals that are in there, Jasmine , Rose, Cedarwood, Sandalwood, ….

Why do we do this? First it is an experiment to see whether perfume sell at an evening like that and an experiment allowing us to spread the message: Hello….we are there! You remember…the niche thing…..And then, probably most important, it is an event that sounds like an awefull lot of fun!

Finally, the August Vogue (German edition), with a little, but fine beauty note featuring my L’air du dĂ©sert marocain. That’s a first for me…
Eau souvenir…. I love it!

Sometime I try to visit my website, with the eyes of a stranger, trying to take a step aside and look at it like someone who has never seen it before. A difficult taks because you tend to become blind in the sense that you know exactly what is where and do not realize anymore that things are hard to find or information is missing.

I did this yesterday and realized one thing: I do not have any pictures of my samples there. Which is a pitty because I put quite some effort into them and with the new flyer design I feel I should a least show what a client gets.

Thus….this will change in the coming days. If I find time,I will also try some javascripting that I found lately, allowing links that bring little windows up with other links, which might be a cool tool to guide clients through the information space… to be tested.

For all those happy folks living near by…. there’s a L’air du dĂ©sert marocain on the go for you…. Pascal and me had the idea of placing a bottle outside the shop, allowing people to pass by and spray. We just considered it a test. It is quite amazing how many clients use this bottle just on the go…., and enter the shop soon after. It is kind of an immediate client interaction, seamless, without having a sales person involved…In an abstract way, this is the way to go on the web, too. Allowing a client to discover things, seamless, using tools like Ajax applications or alike, with an on-the-go feeling. The key is: Interaction (without having to wait for the server loading things). Ajax sounds like a little bit too heavy for me, though…but still: There might be small things to improve…

Another nice thing about the internet: Having a website is like building an endless puzzle: It is never finished but hopefully looks better with every piece you put in there.

Paper is probably one of the best inventions by man/women. (I would guess it was a woman inventing it… not for the shopping lists ….hehehe…but just because I feel that making paper is somewhat related to weaving or knitting.) Paper is a great thing having around you, allowing externalizing part of your brain, and amazingly enough, it is even in our days not replaced by electronic means. It will, sooner or later, though. And you can create a lot with paper. Making little air planes, write love letters, shopping lists, or produce thousands of pages of regulation and legislation text. This use of paper is inflationary and you find paper printed with black letters on it telling you what when not to do everywhere, unfortunately also in Russia.
It is such a pity, but I learnt yesterday that it is not that easy to import perfumes to Russia. Pascal from Medieval art&vie has contacts to a nice Swiss man, living in Russia, engaged in export/import/sales, and we aimed at bringing our perfumes to Russia together, to Moscow as a matter of fact. Imagine: Tauer Perfumes in Zurich, Bruchsal, Upingham, Hollywood and Moscow. Cool, ain’t it? Obviously there is an alcohol regulation that makes things difficult. We continue working on it, but it will need some more time. Therefore, for all my Russian friends and perfume lovers: Patience, please ….and you can always get your perfumes from Switzerland directly, this works.
Talking marketing today: The sample flyers for the L’air du désert marocain and the Le Maroc pour elle arrived. Two heavy parcels with thousands of flyers that are styled in the same line as is the Lonestar Memories flyer. I look forward to sending out lots of samples now, easily prepared and all styled through following one line. What we see coming up here is something like a corporate identity. Which is somewhat twofold; one line for the web, the letters, the business card and then a clear line for the perfumes, each with an individual note, fitting its theme. Bottom line: Two more boxes filled with paper.

After yesterday’s interview on this blog which was a pleasure to post, I realized that I completely forgot to mention my own interview on the Scented Salamander of yesterday…not that I would be too modest to mention…. I just forgot as I was so excited about my conversation with Sands. Thus, here are some thoughts on perfumery on Scented Salamander. Enjoy.

And mentioning interviews…. here is another one. This one is quite different, I guess, but judge for yourselves. It is a skype discussion with Marlen that I enjoyed a lot and I still remember this Sunday afternoon vividly, chatting with him, who knows so much about perfumes and has such a pleasant voice. Again: Here is the interview on PerfumeCritic. Enjoy.

Originally, I planned to talk today about one line of thought based on yesterday’s talk. I had to change the schedule, though and will think about it tomorrow. Right now, I am sending two flyers to print: One for the L’air du dĂ©sert Marocain, one for the Le Maroc pour elle. Both will allow me to produces samples, by glueing the sample vial on and both are built on the layout of my Lonestar Memories design, of course continueing to use the visual brand of Le maroc and l’air, being the rose on one hand and the moon over the desert on the other hand. Both will also allow me to sooner or later transfer the packaging for these two scents to the Lonestar Memories type of packaging… again, respecting the individual appearance. But that’s a medium future project.

And finally… I am arranging the last details for the next bottle orders and the necessary preparations for my vacation, which is kind of fun, too.

Thus, I leave you with all this interview reading and some comments on POL on the Orris scent by Prince Barry. Enjoy.