Yesterday, well, yesterday, the blog was down for quite a while. A technical glitch, nothing serious, but my IT guru told me to wait writing and doing anything on the blog before all is set to normal again. So there we went: No post yesterday. Another glitch: I got a lot of birthday wishes for a birthday that wasn’t really my birthday. But the article, where this bd was mentioned (in Italian, click here) was super lovely. It won’t open right now, as -I think-  extrait.it has a technical glitch these days, too.

And then there was a great review up on Fragrantica, featuring l’eau d’épices (click here), and I say thank you for featuring this great, unique and special baby of mine.

And then there was my newsletter going out Monday morning, telling those who registered for my newsletter that Eau d’épices is shipping again. By the end of last year, I switched to Mailchimp for my newsletter , and manage subscribers and newsletters there, for a reasonable price, and an easy to use (web based) interface and a reliable sending mechanism behind the scene, and a great reporting that I use only partly. As I mention the newsletter here: of the roughly 50% of all recipients opening the newsletter 47.5% are from the US (these are not clicks, but every recipient opening the newsletter counts just once, independent of how often they open it) . The second largest location by opened newsletters: Switzerland. (which I find amazing, as Switzerland is super, super small, but still: It is my home base). Third is the UK, followed by Germany and Australia on the same level. Don’t ask me whether I make use of the numbers… I just look at them, Alice in wonderland -like. I guess a marketing professional could do wonders with them.

So you see: An exciting day, yesterday! Today’s going to be another exciting (spring) day here: The sun shines like crazy, temperatures feel great for mid March, and I gave my gardenia plant a new larger pot, hoping that I can soon put the plant out, as the living room is ok, but not perfect for Ms. gardenia. I hope that the replanting will do her good, and won’t be harmful. While replanting it, I did a picture with the Nokia camera phone that comes now with a new app, allowing me to set aperture and exposition and ISO. I chose a high ISO of 3200, in order to get a high granularity, as I wanted to have a picture of a gardenia blossom that is a bit like a newspaper photo, black and white.

Most of you know it already: Gardenia will be the first scent of a line within the line, Sotto la luna, and will launch September 2014. That’s in about 5-6 months. That’s like around the corner, and I am slowly but surely getting into a first excited state here. My goal: Production of all (scent, filled bottles, labels) finished by end of April/May. Text and pictures ready by end of May. When I say text, I mean two things: Text that describes the perfume, what is inside, notes, ingredients. And text that describes Sotto la luna. Why a new line, what makes it different, what path did I choose to march there.

How I do this? It is actually trickier than you’d think. I already got some comments here and there, telling me what sotto la luna is. Which is odd. Anyhow: One “false” note or ingredient, like cumin, and you lost 50% of all perfume lovers, independent of what cumin does there. It is “CODE” we, perfumers and communicators, provide. Ronny from Scents and Sensibility , one of my two UK stockists, was talking on Facebook about musks and how musks actually shouldn’t/can’t be “CLEAN”. She is right there. I mean the pour musk deer had to give away his glands not to make perfume lovers smell clean, but to conjure hints of toilette, unwashed body odor, savory hair, animalic flowers, uncertainty and twistedness into perfumes ( a long time ago….). These days, with the overall use of musks in cleaning products, since decennials , especially washing related products, the modern consumer got conditioned to think “clean” when he/she smells musks.

How cool’s that? So, you see: It is all about code, and conditioning.  Can you change this conditioning and reset the code? Not really, not fast for sure. There is no hope there.

Anyhow: This is how I work on text. I don’t text really. I hope for ideas appearing out of the blue. And I collect words, pictures, that should help me there. Like “infinity”.

Again… don’t ask me where this will bring me. After a while we will see, I hope. And if not: In the end- and that’s the nice part- it does not matter that much. The scent matters. And the fragrance will, like, blow your mind . Sort of, I think.