marketing and branding

quick harvest

Today’s picture shows you some radish, growing on the veranda in a box (urban farming sort of). Radish is growing already at 5°C and it is one of the easy and fast growing treats that basically always comes, in small space and rainy weather, and with minimal interventions needed, except maybe for regular snail checks.

So we are having radish these days with the daily salad and I love it.

A quick harvest and reward.

I wish in perfumery the harvest and rewards would come equally quick and easy. Well, it doesn’t. Having said that: I am blessed, having started 11 years ago, I can harvest some fruits there, too. Impatient as I am: I learn on a daily basis that in business it takes years and years and even more years to get to a point. And crafting perfumes, learning to create them, takes years, too. I got an email the other day from a perfume lover who -like so many – wants to create perfumes, too. Asking for help, because after 2-3 years the creations are not there yet.

I will not help, of course. It is not my job and if I would start helping, I could spend the rest of my life helping others. A lesson that I learned and, as I always say, when you start asking for help you have already lost. There are technical aspects: For these books exist. And there is the creative space that you need to wander and find your way and there is nobody who can help you there; except you aim at following somebody’s path and copy/paste what has been done before.

Anyhow:Creating perfumes is an ongoing challenge which is nice as the learning never stops. Learning does not stop when building a brand either. Everything changes and we all need to adapt. Adaption can mean many things. We all will witness these changes in the coming months and years. We will see brands and stores vanishing, more perfume appearing and disappearing in the same year.

In LA, at the Institute of Art and Olfaction event, I was asked by a perfume brand owner: “What do you think is the next big thing in perfumery (in niche)?”

I answered: Estée Lauder.

My answer was answered by a big question mark. Like “what?”.

Finally, I got something like “oh there must be more and there is so much happening and there is so much room for niche and all”
(You know… the usual self motivating niche speak).

“Nobody cares what’s happening there”, I answered. And I continued for myself (sort of):And there is no room left because Estee and a couple of others fill all the shelves. No room left.

Like I said above: I am blessed and very happy. But at some point, I figured it is time for some honesty.