Quality in a Perfume

It wasn't long ago that the perfume house was thought to be a strange castle in Transylvania and the perfume laboratory an obscure, damp place guarded by dragons and unknown creatures. The perfumer was the original invisible man who spoke a strange language and who everybody was afraid to look at for fear of turning into stone.

It’s 1985--have we made progress? Have things changed? A little in some cases, but not a great deal in many ways. When planning my presentation on “Quality in a Perfume”, I wondered if we should consider quality to the perfumer, or quality to the perfume house. Do these mean the same thing? Yes, of course, they mean the same thing! In the final analysis, isn’t the perfumer still the perfume house? So, let us see what the perfumer needs to do and look at the changes which have occurred in the last ten years.

Years ago, the salesperson would talk to the manufacturer’s purchasing agent and the perfumer and come up with an appropriate submission, This was the entire extent of the creative process. Now the salesperson talks to the manufacturer’s creative director and/or the marketing director and then goes back and talks to the perfume house sales and marketing group, the evaluation group, the creative and perfumery group and general administration.

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