TWO OPPORTUNITIES TO HELP PEOPLE

There are innumerable opportunities to help people every day, either directly or indirectly, and perfumistas tend to be really big-hearted when it comes to sharing bits of their collections and enabling others in their habit. However, it’s not every day that you get a chance to be a good fairy and help people who are interested in perfume by doing something other than sharing the perfume itself. In these two cases, the help you could provide takes two very different forms, one would cost you some time but no money, while the other would cost you some money, but very little time.

1. A survey on personality and olfactory expertise

This is an opportunity to help an Australian undergraduate student in psychology who is conducting a study on whether there is a correlation between personality traits and expertise in perfume-making and/or perfume appreciation. What you can provide is a set of data to help increase the statistical validity of his study, which will, in turn, possibly provide some insight into the question of whether we perfume-lovers share certain personality traits. The data will be kept anonymous and confidential, and will be used for educational purposes only, as part of the student’s honors thesis. To read more about the project, please go to this post on the Australian Perfume Junkies website. Here’s the link to the survey, if you’d like to go there directly. 

2. Replacement of a blogger’s dying laptop

This is an opportunity to help Sheila Eggenberger (akaTarleisio) of the Alembicated Genie continue with her blogging and writing. Sheila has a unique voice among perfume bloggers, and we would not want it to go silent because of a technical failure. You can read all about it here. She has limited resources to replace her dying laptop, so has set up an Indiegogo campaign to fund a replacement. You can help by giving as much or as little as you can afford to the cause. Contributions large and small all add up.

 [Good fairy graphic by Walter Crane, 1878] 

HOW EXCLUSIVE SHOULD PERFUME BE?

In writing my review of M. Micallef Aoud a few days ago, I had intended to direct readers to their USA website where I’ve bought a fair number of 5 ml miniatures, but it appears to no longer exist. This is a sad and unfortunate development because it means that people like me, who are on a limited budget and would not buy large sizes of perfume anyway because we value variety over sheer quantity, are no longer able to readily experience this excellent line and have to go to the decanters.

The disappearance of a favorite website, of course, leads to the question of whether it is good business practice to withdraw easy, inexpensive accessibility to one’s products in favor of the appearance of expensive luxury and exclusivity. There are conflicting philosophies on this issue. One is, “make it available, affordable, and easy to sample, and they will come”. The flip side of this approach is the common assumption that, “if it’s inexpensive, it can’t be good”. The opposite philosophy is, “make it scarce, expensive, and available only in large bottles and they will go to great lengths to seek it out and buy way more than they need”, the premise being, “if it’s rare and expensive, it must be good”. As with most things in life, both views are partly right and partly wrong.

There have been numerous studies on wine, both formal and informal, showing that people in a blind tasting really can’t tell which is the more expensive wine, and often rate cheaper ones as being better. Here’s just one example. 

There are a lot of parallels between wine and perfume. They’re both experienced directly through the chemical senses, and they’re both surrounded by a lot of subjective psychological and cultural mumbo-jumbo. Put a three-buck Chuck in a fancy bottle, charge $65 for it, have a sommelier ceremoniously serve it in a dimly-lit restaurant with immaculate starched white cloth on the tables and classical music playing softly, and most people will savor it as if it’s the nectar of the gods. Put a fairly ordinary perfume in a diamond-studded, blown-glass bottle, make it available only through a few select, luxuriously appointed shops, charge an astronomical price for it, and people will feel incredibly special and sexy when they wear it. For a lot of people, spending large sums of money seems to work not only as a flavor-enhancer, but also as an aphrodisiac.

Clearly, the fancy-packaging phenomenon operates over an enormous range, but falls apart at the extreme ends of the spectrum. Anyone would be dismayed to find MD 20/20 in their $65 bottle of wine, just as they would be surprised to find the finest wine they ever tasted in a dirt-cheap box at the local stop 'n rob. Packaging is a form of communication that creates buyer expectations. 

Like salmon courageously jumping up waterfalls to spawn, every successful perfumer is, at some point, faced with pressure to “go upscale”. Those with a lot of financial backing start out that way and never look back, like the fat farm salmon who never have to go out to sea. Those of us who bootstrap ourselves up from nothing eventually hear customers say, “I never tried your fragrances because they’re so inexpensive that I thought they couldn’t be any good. Then a friend sent me some samples.” We are told that potential wholesale buyers are put off by simple handmade packaging.

These issues and others go through my mind as I look objectively into the future and contemplate “moving to the next level” of the perfume business. In response to these concerns, part of my business plan is to offer a subset of my fragrances in more upscale, retailer-worthy packaging, which naturally increases the price, but it also increases visibility and accessibility to a demographic that might not find or try them otherwise. I am working on this plan right now, but at the same time I want to keep all of my products accessible to everyone, even those who can’t afford more than a few samples or a small, 5-ml bottle. I’m a blue-collar starving-artist perfumer at heart, more of a hands-on craftsperson who focuses on personally creating what’s in my head and heart than an aspirational entrepreneur who focuses on breaking into the highest social circles, characterized in terms of money, celebrity, or both. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind generating enough high-end sales to help subsidize online sales of my whole line of perfumes in small sizes and simple packaging, and keep me amply supplied with all of the expensive fragrance materials I need to make exactly what I want to make. And there is something to be said for beautiful packaging. I like it, too, and am continually searching for the most attractive packaging I can find for every price point. 

Obviously I will continue to offer everything on my website at the same prices I do now, in simple, basic bottles, with upgraded (though not much more expensive) boxes, and gradually put together a “luxury” line that will appeal to those who want the upscale feel. An acquaintance who should know about these things observed that it doesn’t matter what’s in the bottle, it’s the appearance of the bottle that matters to store buyers. That’s no reason to skimp on what’s in the bottle, because once it gets into the hands of a consumer, the juice has to matter. Crap in a silver box with a silk ribbon on it is still crap.  

It’s possible that those customers who order small, basic bottles from my website today may buy fancier, more expensive ones tomorrow or 10 years from now when I have really beautiful, iconic bottles that are themselves works of art. They may also inspire others to do so. It’s all an evolutionary process, keeping the good features that work, but also adapting in ways that facilitate a move into new niches (no pun intended). As Masha observed in a comment on another blog, I make "perfume for the people". I love that image, socialist that I am, and may even use that as my motto!

[Thanks to Wikimedia for the photos of a sterling silver box of coffee beans, a Serge Lutens bell jar, salmon jumping up a waterfall, condoms in a fancy jewelry box, and the iconic Shalimar bottle] 

FIVE ANNOYING ONLINE TRENDS

Now that everything, including newspapers, news magazines, and person-to-person social interaction has transitioned to online form, I’ve noticed some really annoying trends. One of these trends is making a list of everything. I’ve nothing against lists. I make grocery lists, lists of materials I want to put in a fragrance, and a few other sorts of lists. What annoys me are the gratuitous lists that appear every day in online media. In keeping with this very 2010s trend, I’ve decided to make a list of five online trends that I dislike. You may or may not agree with me, and you may have a list of your own. After all, I don’t get all over the ethersphere, so may well have missed some that are even more annoying than the ones on my list. Without further ado, here’s my list of the top 5 that annoy me today.

1. “Top 10” (or choose any other number) lists of whatever it is (pet chicken breeds, best public toilets in Paris, eyebrow grooming tips, ways to leave your lover, stupid interview questions, ugly celebrities, colors to paint the caps of your garden gnomes– ad infinitum). The kicker is that these aren’t simple lists, but rather “slide shows” that you have to click through item by item if you’re really interested enough to do so. Who puts these illustrated flash-card lists together and why? Do people really want to take 10 times as long to read a slideshow-format list as they would to read a single, unified list? And what’s the obsession with lists, anyway? The only explanation I can think of is that the slideshow format greatly increases the number of clicks on the website in question, but the obsession with the lists themselves remains unexplained.

2. News articles that aren’t. A few times lately I’ve clicked on what appears to be a bona fide news headline only to find myself looking at an ad. These aren’t even the online versions of infomercials, they’re ads pure and simple. That’s blatant deception, and the publications that engage in this behavior should know better.

3. Political or charitable organizations that continuously bombard my e-mail inbox with messages begging for donations. Just today I received five redundant messages from a political organization wanting me to contribute to whatever their latest campaign is. As I was writing this, a sixth one arrived. No matter how much I sympathize with these people and their causes, their constant begging turns me off. Because of their failure to distinguish between bringing critical and important issues to our attention and simply whining about business as usual, they lose all credibility.

4. Unauthorized charges by services that set up a monthly automatic charge to a credit card. Recently there have been instances of small extra charges appearing for “upgrades”, “insurance”, and various other “fees”, even though no one requested them and the charge was not authorized. Resolving the issue requires a struggle to speak with a real person or, in the worst-case scenario, canceling the service in question. My suspicion is that the companies that engage in this practice think that their customers won’t notice a few dollars here and there. With millions of subscribers, those few extra dollars add up.

5. Mass invitations to small, private events. A while back I received an invitation to the birthday party of a person I work with. It seemed like a nice gathering at a restaurant right down the street from the university, scheduled for an evening when I was planning to be in the neighborhood, so I thought about going. Then I saw that the wife of the birthday boy had invited 98 people. At that point I started to feel like the target of a mass marketing campaign rather than a friend or colleague. The restaurant probably isn’t even big enough to hold 98 people, assuming they have other business besides the party. Of course, I’m sure no one expects all 98 people to come to the party, but what if they did? What’s the percentage yield on a mass-distributed birthday party invitation? Five percent? If five people and their family members or guests showed up, that would be just about right for the venue, and could have been accomplished with personalized, targeted invitations.

I’m all for mass invitations to public events like theatre productions, trade shows, perfume launch parties, concerts, and big outdoor festivals, but not sit-down dinners that should be shared with a few good friends and close family members. 

[In idly looking for photos to illustrate the concept of "pet chicken" I came across a lot of bizarre pictures of poultry wearing various sorts of garments, harnesses, or diapers, and walking on leashes. They're not all that relevant to the post, but are simply provided for your amazement and entertainment. Photos taken from today.com, backyardchickens.com, hensaver.com (home of the "hen holster"), and etsy.com.] 

IN PRAISE OF SLOW PERFUME

Over the past two years I’ve worked on several perfume projects that had shorter turnaround times than I’d like. Some of the rush was because I was given very little time (by my standards) to work on a project and some was due to the fact that I tend to juggle multiple tasks and procrastinate on whatever is not extremely urgent. Of course, the result of procrastination is also a short deadline. I don’t think the end products of the work that was done quickly are inferior in any way to those that have taken longer. In fact, one of my favorite fragrances was produced on a short deadline. What I can say, though, is that the end products might have been different if I’d had more time to think about them and tweak them, and I might have savored the creative process more.

I don’t like being rushed by externally imposed deadlines. Just as I enjoy waking up slowly in the morning with my laptop and coffee and just as I enjoy eating things that would be categorized as belonging to the “slow food” movement, I’m a believer in “slow perfume”.  I like to take my time and savor every stage of formulation, tweaking subtly as I go, and thinking about it as I sniff over the course of days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years. It’s happened more than once that a formula just didn’t quite smell the way I wanted it to, so I put it aside. Later, I discovered a new material that was exactly what I needed to finish it up. Working on a strict deadline, I would have settled for something that was not my original vision.

I’ve thought about the concept of slow perfume as I’ve worked on Blackbird, going through a 6-month process that mostly involved thinking about it and testing materials. For me, perfume-making is like writing – most of the work is done consciously or subconsciously in my head before I put fingers to keyboard or do any mixing of materials. Perfume materials need time to blend, so smelling has to be done after they have time to settle in together. The blending may also be a multi-stage process, with each stage taking time to mature before it’s combined with other components.

I don’t know how other perfumers work, but I do know that for most endeavors, having time to think and reflect is important. Good wine, cheese, and some perfume materials are better when aged. Bees painstakingly select the best nectar and collect it to make real honey, not a high-fructose corn syrup imitation. Creative concepts also need time to develop. Products made with love and thought must somehow reflect that slow process. 

[Photos all from Wikimedia]