Hey Fragrant Friend 👋 ,
It’s day 665 of me trying to change the perfume industry for the better. Here’s the weekly note from inside the engine room.
Update
This week felt a bit different. Less about waiting for things to arrive and more about paying attention to what is already happening around the project.
I sent my preferred feedback on the latest fragrance modification to Dario Siegel, the perfumer behind our second scent. All members of our evaluation group have now received the modification as well, which means we’ll soon have our next call to discuss impressions before Dario goes back to the formula.
Something interesting happened around that process. During a conversation with a potential retail partner from Poland, the topic of our community evaluation came up. He asked whether something like this could eventually be shared with selected retail partners and their most loyal customers. Not at scale, but almost like a small circle around the creation of a fragrance. That question stayed with me.
Until now I mainly did this evaluation group for two reasons. First, several independent perfumers told me that fragrance creation often happens in a bit of an echo chamber, with feedback coming very late. Second, I personally would have loved something like this years ago. Being fascinated by perfume and having the chance to witness how a fragrance slowly takes shape.
Personal Notes
What I’m starting to see is that this idea might have a life beyond what I initially imagined. It’s still small and probably not scalable at all. Right now it’s extremely hands-on. Filling modification samples manually, organising calls, reading through everyone’s notes. And sometimes the more commercial part of my brain wonders where all of this is supposed to lead.
At the same time something inside me feels quite certain. The thing I love most about building this venture is that it’s a creative outlet. Ideas often come quite intuitively. And when I started this project I promised myself that I would follow that intuition instead of over-optimising everything.
Not because intuition is always right. But because I’m curious what happens if you really trust it.
Seeing a retailer independently pick up on the same idea and start imagining where it could go gave me a quiet sense that maybe this internal compass isn’t completely wrong.
Love Letters to the World
There was also a small moment this week that somehow connected back to the fragrance itself.
As some of you know, I’ve been writing handwritten letters to a few retailers I admire across Europe. I’ve always loved the idea of a physical letter with a wax seal. Every seal turns out slightly different. Sometimes the wax flows perfectly, sometimes it doesn’t.
At one point I caught myself spending almost ten minutes on a single envelope, trying to place the wax and the seal just right. While doing that I thought about Chester’s inspiration for our first fragrance, watching a Balinese woman preparing a Canang Sari offering with quiet focus and care.
Standing there with wax on my desk and envelopes everywhere, it suddenly felt like I was trying to bring a similar kind of attention to how the fragrance enters the world. Before the World Moved Again was born from that kind of care, so it somehow feels right that even the way it travels to a retailer carries a bit of that same spirit.
Building something like this constantly moves between two forces. The intuitive side that follows curiosity and detail. And the entrepreneurial side that keeps asking whether any of it will actually work in the real world.
So for now I keep moving forward. One modification, one letter, one conversation at a time.
Mood of the week: Energised and optimistic 🤩
Song of the week: Sade- Paradise (TT Rework).
More soon.
Sebastian