In recent years there has been a marked increase in interest in artistic or niche perfumery.

The mere fact that a good number of brands, pioneers in this sector, have recently been bought up by large investors or multinational groups is one of the most relevant signs of how their knowledge and market penetration has increased and what potential these brands are considered capable of developing.

As I have now been operating in this sector for over 30 years, I have witnessed some relevant and important changes.

In the early days of this sector, which was the Cinderella of the Italian perfumery in the 1950s, brand owners often had no special economic resources and almost exclusively focused their creativity on the quality and remarkable originality of fragrances. Packaging had in very few cases moulds for unique and exclusive bottles or luxurious packaging, communication had no budget and brands often did not go beyond their national context.

The development of a substantial network of retailers, especially in Italy, which gradually introduced these unknown and "difficult and different" brands that did not have a pre-existing demand, ensured that sales were based on the passionate ability of the shopkeepers to promote these masterpieces while they encouraged customers to diligently pass the word on for others to discover this fascinating world.

For decades, they have tried to make people appreciate the enormous difference between a good perfume and a beautiful perfume, i.e. one that is capable not so much of mimicking a particular scent of a flower or wood, but of telling a story, as a piece of music can. Fragrances capable of taking us elsewhere, of moving us and making us euphoric or sad, of making us fly or making us feel the warmth inside a mountain chalet, where a crackling fire burns while snow is falling, or of running at breakneck speed on a winter beach, with the scent of aromatic bushes on the dunes and the smell of slightly decaying seaweed, or even the pride of a mother separating from a daughter who is leaving the nest as she goes off independently into the world to forge her own life.

Little by little, many small experimental brands have been able to secure a passionate and curious audience.

Many things changed and the world became more visual, influencers and content creators appeared, products were made available online.

People are beginning to see packaging and aesthetic solutions that can meet the expectations of customers for a product that defines itself as artistic.

More and more people, thanks in part to the Covid pandemic, realised the importance of the sense of smell and what it means to lose it even temporarily and that, while confined to the home, one could use perfume for one's own pleasure, and not just to be appreciated by others. Perfume no longer acts as a mask, as an obligatory means to appear similar to everyone else but rather it is appreciated for the emotions that it can give us, for how it can represent us for who we really are.

In the face of growing demand, we are also witnessing, as was easily foreseeable, the appearance of more and more ‘Frankenstein’ brands, i.e. those that take their cues from other brands that have gained a reputation and a following and use their aesthetic aspects, copying their original creations without any particular restraint, even creating a certain amount of confusion in the new public.

This is all important and denotes a certain development in the sector, but we must also consider that the social network audience is becoming more and more accustomed to a communication that proposes aspects of entertainment, as opposed to the story of the perfume's creation and its ability to trigger emotions and memories.

Shopkeepers now find themselves, unlike in the past, often being asked by customers for niche fragrances that they have become aware of via social networks, so it is perhaps easier to sell them without any special effort and it almost seems as if we are going back to when fragrances were sold on the basis of magazine releases. Sales grow, the target audience expands, the business becomes more and more interesting, and we risk losing originality and the ability to accept the rate of risk inherent in any research activity, to take refuge in the warm wings of predictability.

However, I believe that there are and will still be retailers who will want to guide customers into a world of interesting projects, not always promoted on social media, which do not always follow trends, but rather could and would like to anticipate them, often by a lot. Supporting these creations with passion and involvement will ensure that some of their customers can find their ideal olfactory companion, from among a wide range of scented stories, of possible candidates to become the smell-tracks of their lives.

If the network of such shops expands in countries around the world, as has been happening for some years now, each perfume will be worn by people who will empathise with it, but without it becoming a perfume worn by many other people, who have nothing to do with its story-telling. A slow-moving international market, but capable of generating interesting sales, without ever making their message banal or uncharacteristic.

We see more and more single-brand shops, which in itself is not a bad thing, but where obviously there will not be the breadth of choice that a multi-brand could guarantee. There will always be a need for sales outlets that truly promote olfactory knowledge, i.e. that do not push us to decode fragrances according to the raw materials that make them up, but rather according to their incredible ability to excite. In these shops, we should rediscover the pleasure we had in certain bookshops of discovering, among recent editions, as in ancient masterpieces, that book that will give us unexpected and formative pleasure, which we will remember forever and which will become part of our life.

Creative and experimental brands, I am convinced, will in any case have an even greater need to be offered in places of aggregation who place importance on sharing the olfactory message. In turn, there will have to be an expression of a net change in the way olfactory research is enjoyed, with innovation in sales outlets, in which the real and the virtual will coexist more and more in a synergic manner. Fragrances that have earned excellent performance and a following, will support others that will maintain a high level of innovation and courage, in a mix that will ensure that research always has its own expression.

We will see, shortly, I hope, how the search for new ways of doing retail and promoting a blossoming of artistic perfumery will be able to match the research that has so far been expressed mainly in the creativity of fragrances.