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Innovating Sustainable Storytelling Scents with FOOPE Fragrances · Skin Anarchy

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hi guys, welcome back to Future Anarchy.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: This is a Fragrance Friday feature.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: I am so excited about this brand.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: I literally was talking to our guest today, you know, behind the scenes, and we were discussing how I made my own little TikTok with the fragrances because I'm just so in love with the scents.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so without further ado, I can I wait to introduce you guys to the founder of Food Fragrances, Femi Olern Toba.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the show, Femi.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so honored to be hosting you.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I want to, you know, I want to dive in, Femi, and learn all about you and your background and your journey into creating the brand and what led you into the world of fragrance.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a it's a funny story.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It started uh the summer of uh 97.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I went to the library after I had lots of like C's and D's studying chemistry, and I was looking for something to get me very motivated.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I saw this book called The Art and Science of Perfumery, and that changed my life forever.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I literally spent like three days in a library reading chapters from chapters to chapters until I knew at our spot that in the long term this is actually what I wanted to do.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: I just got very fascinated about how the ingredients actually interact with each other and the smell of each of them and how you create amazing fragrances as a consequence that can go into fine formulation or to substrates like uh like candles, shampoos.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think the highlight for me was when I realized that an average person interacts with fragrance uh nine times daily.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine that?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um the time you you actually shower to your tits paste, you know, that there's actually flavor or fragrance in there, and then there's uh the baked and soap, the the shampoo, if you've got uh coily hair, what kind of hair, yeah, and then the entire journey all through the day, the minimum of like nine instances where you're gonna be confronted or have contact with fragrance.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I knew how to have spot this is what I wanted to do.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I started studying chemistry, like I mentioned.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was fun, but also very abstract.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I enjoyed doing it because I worked as a chemist for a few years and then I transitioned, I tried to get into perfumery school and I didn't make the cut.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: That really hurt me in France because it's uh highly competitive, and I try to get into Grass A Institute of Perfumery at that point, but I mean they accept like 10 students every year, like it's it's it's really highly competitive.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need them, you made a you made a incredible line with Adam.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: Who needs them?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was really hard, and I I considered a lot of options, and I think at that point I had started kind of concotting my own formulations and kind of replicating some of the very known fragrances like CK1 contradiction, terrorist DMS, you know, although this fragrances that I really loved.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think I just knew at that point that at some point I would have to create my own brand that reflects my environment.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: But for me to do that, I needed to understand how fragrances were being made and also understand the business side of fragrances.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And really that's how the journey began.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's so such a cool way to start into the fragrance world, honestly, because no one talks about the chemistry behind a good fragrance.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, you had said something very intriguing for me when you were, you know, explaining the background, it was this idea of molecules interacting with them with each other, right?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: And this is something for me as a consumer that has always baffled me is that how does fragrance really come alive?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like because there's no one out here talking about that.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't have any education around it.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: You can definitely see where there would be a lot of education involved, you know, if you're trying to go into it for as a business or or anything.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, even as a consumer, I can tell you there are so many times where a friend would is recommending something to me or has in the past, and I try it on myself, and it's just it's terrible for me, you know?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm that's where I'm always like, how do these molecules really work?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when they're interacting with your skin, each other, the environment, like what is going on?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: So that's fascinating to me, your journey into this world.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I and I mean to thank you, but I think the the challenging thing about industry is education.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh and it's incredibly hard to describe fragrances.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and I I love the idea of the TikTok uh perfume community because they've actually helped in bringing a lot of education.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: But uh on a very high level, it's really hard to describe scent because when you when you think about bagamant, for example, you think it's a citrus note.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: What exactly is it?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is it like uh a sweet, fresh note?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is it uh it just becomes very, very complicated, and I think at the end of the day, it's incumbent on the perfumer that designs the fragrances, but also I think they have to educate it on much more so people really know what goes into the formulation, what kind of molecules and compounds combine to form a particular note that does become the signature of most of those very successful fragrances.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: But if I can provide kind of like an overview of how fragrances are being made, just a very, very high level.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, perfumery is a is a symphony, there's a beginning, there's a medial, there's an end.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the beginning is called the the top notes that everybody pretty much know about.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: When you spray it on your skin, you know, the first couple of notes that you you smell, they're all often very fresh.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're they often you're gonna hear that they're they're kind of like citrus notes or bergamot and all those very fantastic um oils.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you go to the middle, which is a middle note, there are whole kind of collections of notes that you could create or ingredients that you could add in there, like floral notes, like green notes.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: So when I talk about notes, it notes is a combination of different oils to form a particular signature smell.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll call that a note, and then or an accord, and then the base note, which kind of allows the fragrances to smell much longer, 10, even 15, 20 hours in some cases.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: They are very resinous in nature, very balsamic.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I could talk about the origins pretty much for the entire day, and I'm very fascinated by the base notes, but uh but in a nutshell, it's a combination of the beginning, the middle, and end, and and the symphony of that is what really makes the fragrance from an art form.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: But each of the ingredients are so unique in a way that if you if you're buying, like let's talk about the the top note.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if you take citrus note, let's say lemon oil, yeah.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lemon oil has over 30 ingredients in the oil, the essential oil when you buy it.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, when I look at uh when I look at uh lemon oil, even bergamot oil, and I kind of as a chemist, I can break that down and see pretty much everything that is in that oil.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a combination of the good and the bad, right?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: So they're tapping in it, they're the bad stuff actually in traditional natural oil.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: So when you hear a lot of uh fragrance companies that isolate or use synthetics, they are literally isolating the chromophores uh or the odoriferous part of that oil, the good stuff, and then isolating that and and synthesizing that in the lab, which was the bulk of what I did as a chemist.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Synthesizing that so that it's very clean, it's very affordable, and the delivery is much better when you come when you use that in formulations.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why you say perfumery these days is a combination of the synthetics as well as the naturals.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: But again, there's this dichotomy, the naturals are better compared to the to synthetics.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's complete uh BS.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I agree with you though on that.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: That last point that you made, because I have a lot of perfumes in my collection that there is synthetic, you know, in there, and they're some of my favorite scents.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, but that's very interesting what you said.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I'm I'm trying to keep up a little bit from the chemistry angle because when it comes to these specific like molecular structures, right?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's very complicated, I'm sure, the actual chemistry of the interactions, but you had mentioned something like a specific type.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, chromophores.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: So chromophores um are the kind of structure architecture of the uh odoriferous part of that particular oil.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the the best smelling part of that oil, like take a rose oil, for example.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: There are probably like 11, 12 ingredients compounds within a rose oil.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: But what really makes rose oil rose oil, the smell, you can isolate that, and that's what we call the chromophore, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's responsible for the the intensity and the smell of the oil.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what chemists would do is just to isolate that, understand the molecular structure, then synthesize that uh inexpensively in the lab, which is still very expensive, actually, to do.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's still, I'm sure it is.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: I I can I can only imagine.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: And but you know, you you said something very interesting about top notes because this comes up a lot for me when I'm shopping for perfumes, and because I personally prefer people like to refer to as clean scents or like citrusy scents, or you know what I mean?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like I like a lot of white floral in my in my perfumes, and oftentimes, as you know, like that is what evaporates quickly, that's the quickest part to leave, right?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: So that's where I'm very interested in, you know, because your fragrances to me are very unique.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: I love the Ife one.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: I hope I'm saying that correctly.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's beautiful because it's a scent, it's a citrusy and clean scent, as one would usually hear someone describe, but it really lingers in a beautiful way.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's what really I think blew me away about your line was that I'm finding something I truly love, but my pain point as a consumer is the the fragrances I love are like that one, you know, and they're the ones that evaporate so quickly or they they leave so quickly and they don't linger at all.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: So, what did you do?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Because you really created magic here with that, you know.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: When I when I spritz it on, I mean it's I've got great wear time with it.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious, is that a synthetic?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad to hear that.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, there are there are a lot of dimensions to that.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So let me let me start by talking about clean.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the the clean ingredients, it's a highly debated, um, quite unregulated actually space within perfumery.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and every company defines what clean is for them.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I know the governing body infra allows us to walk within a spectrum of chemicals or synthetics that we could use to make fragrances.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that being said, for us, clean ingredients are ingredients that have no limitation, rational complications on the skin.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And clean could also mean helping sustainability initiatives within the perfumer space.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So let's take a couple of oils that I know and a couple of ingredients that I know are in danger of being extinct.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you continue to harvest those trees or those oils, it could cost a lot of effect in terms of biodiversity.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what we try to do is then to create a cleaner version of it in the lab, and that becomes classified as a clean ingredient.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And again, this is so highly debated in the industry, and and for us, we're very clear on what clean is.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Clean are ingredients that do not destroy the environment, the ones that protect the sustainability of ingredients, and also very great for the skin, great for the body.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we'll put in our fragrances.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, regarding IFER, if there is actually a very personal story to me.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually my personal story.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's a story of broken relationship and broken love.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: We try to capture the best and the worst of a romantic relationship.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you start dating, you meet a person for the fourth time.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's like roses and violets, like nothing could ever go wrong.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the dates, the feeling, the butterfly feeling is in the stomach.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: We try to capture that excitement, that soft, fresh excitement within the fragrance.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the other side of it lies the moody days, you know, the when you suddenly get uh broken get brokenhearted, and and that bitter sweet relationship was captured in the fragrance.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what really makes that fragrance unique is the mojito fusion that we we added into that fragrance.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's very unique, it's hard to replicate.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's the mojito fusion, and the mojito fusion is a citrus, woody, uh fresh aquatic note that is a combination of about seven different ingredients to make that particular fusion, so that gives a fragrance this very angelic aquatic feel, also luxurious, and then can carry through with the mask in there, can carry through between eight to 13 hours.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: I love that fragrance so much.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's so good.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it it's it's very personal to me, and I think from the feedback we've gotten from our customers, they tend to use that on you know romantic uh dinners or even during the summer when they want something very fresh, not too intrusive, and but still very luxurious in nature.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, and you know, you just made my little ego, my little TikTok uh you know, perfume, hashtag perfume tick tock ego go up because I was describing this on my little TikTok that I made, and I literally said I was like, it smells like water, like I meant aquatic, but there were so many notes, you know what I mean?
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just like, this is like it's it's amazing.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a birth of joy, you know.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I just really, really love that one specifically, but all of them are just so lovely.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I I really love that you tied in that the story behind it because you know, I'm not gonna lie to you, you know, when I look at perfumery, and maybe I'm I'm a kind of a different consumer, I've always been like this.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: I do look at, you know, what does this really mean to me, you know, because I'm not that girl that has, you know, 500 perfumes in my closet.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm that's not me, you know, it's just not.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so the ones that I carry with me, the ones I take with me or I include in my day-to-day, they're very like, you know, precious to me.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's it sounds, you know, weird, but like I it's true.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: I I have like maybe five, you know, that I really love.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so one of the big things for me is pairing them and being able to add on to them.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And one thing I noticed about Ife was that I can have this as my main scent of the day, but I also like other brands.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like, for example, Joe Malone is one of my all-time favorite brands.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I love great brand.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: And they make some great citrusy scents.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so I layer most of my perfumes also with their perfumes, you know.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I was layering Ife with Joe Malone's, uh, a couple of you know, Joe Malone's, and I was like, this is like heaven.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then I tried uh pairing it with Caroline Herrera's good girl because I like that one as well.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, this is amazing.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like as if the scent is almost, you know, it it's amplifying the other ones, you know what I mean, in a very beautiful way.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's what I want you to really speak on is this idea of layering perfumes.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: What should we know as consumers, you know, from the perspective of what should you approach this with, you know, the the understanding and knowledge when you're trying to layer your sense and create that, you know, custom blend for yourself.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh again, this is one of the very debated part of perfumery.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I've seen quite a number of TikToks from influencers about this, but here is a full perspective around layering.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: We think it's the best that can happen in perfumery.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I mean, fragrances can be won as it is based on the signature that you buy it or you're using, or you can combine that with other fragrances that help to amplify the signature.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the case of if that, because if that is so very aquatic, very musky, very unisex in nature, and it's it's lingering towards a kind of like a summer scent, it can be easily complemented with a warm scent.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're using, you talked about Joe Malone, I don't know which of the fragrances, uh, but it can easily be layered with a different fragrance that changes the chemistry of the entire fragrance to give something totally different.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, that's the beauty of perfumery because you don't have to stay very uh low-key with one fragrance, you can always combine to create something different, and it's always an inspiration to us because when we're creating fragrances, I can go in 50 different ways, and I need to stay very focused because there's just so many options that you could do, uh, you could take a fragrance, and I think that's that's one of the reasons you're beginning to see fragrances that have one the same fragrance that have like three variations, and I've seen that with some major brands uh doing that right now.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: For us, we're gonna just gonna stick to one.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: But to answer your question and how you should look at our look at this, if you have a fresh scent, something very fresh, very aquatic, uh, layer that on top of a of a very warm, resinous, balsamic scent.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the only one I can think about when it comes to Fuppies uh Ibera, for example, is a best-selling scent.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually showed up on the website right now, it's very woody, amber in nature, and then you can kind of layer that on top of the effect, it creates a different total signature.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just incredible, incredible.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not surprised you have that feeling, and you're probably gonna have that with different fragrances that you layer on top of the fair, or vice versa.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: I just think it's brilliant, and I and and the reason I'm even saying it is because I've I've layered a lot of you know different brands, and I just this just stood out to me, you know what I mean?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't take away from my other ones that I love, but it didn't mute the you know, if I mute that at all for me, and I really appreciated that as a consumer, so that's why I was like, I gotta ask him, you know, like what is the yeah, I mean I'm glad you actually saw that because we don't get that question quite enough.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And well, we everybody have access to ingredients, like every perfumery can buy rose oil, it can buy jasmine, whatever oil it is.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the the magic of perfumery is creating a proprietary formulation on a chord, a note for yourself that is gonna be so almost impossible to replicate.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And under the GC spectrophotometer, you wouldn't really see those compounds in there, and that's what Moito Fusion does for us.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's just a magic formula in the fragrance, and the rest of the ingredients you can buy it, but again, you gotta figure out where did we get the bergamot for from?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the bergamot from Egypt smells different differently from bergamot from Mexico, from South Africa.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna have to figure out like each of those ingredients from different countries have different notes, and that's what makes perfumery so interesting.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And all the replicas that we see, it's it's almost impossible for you to get the exact formulation because you just don't know where they got the ingredients from.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you bring up such an interesting point there because I am often, you know, seeing a lot of this reverse engineering going on in the world of beauty, fragrance, everything.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure you're aware people love taking a scent and trying to reverse engineer it, you know, and and figure out how we can dupe this.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: But I I don't believe in dupes, personally speaking.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think that if you love a brand, you love a brand, you know, go and buy that brand.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, one thing I want to ask you about is Gen Z.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: And because Gen Z to me is a very interesting consumer when it comes to fragrance, you know, they're very different than millennials.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a millennial millennial.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: So like I because I feel like I consume fragrance and you know, buy them very differently than they do.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, sometimes I'm scrolling through TikTok or social media, wherever, and the purchasing decision that they make is so it's like, I don't know, I don't know how to describe it.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's just very different than millennials, I think, because we're used to going into stores and spraying on, like, you know what I mean, like a like a sheet of paper and and wafting it, but they're just like everywhere, like a body spray, you know what I mean?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: They also spray it everywhere, and they're like, this is it, this is the one.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm so just interested in when you were marketing the brand, were you thinking about Gen Z and what they would like?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what was that journey like for you as an entrepreneur?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let me start by saying that we are a Gen Z focused brand, but we created a brand because my niece and nephews reached out to me about three, four years ago and said, Hey, Femi, we've stolen some of your fragrances.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, how come we don't have a dedicated brand for Gen Z?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: That recognizes the value and the truth that it represented.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: That really got to me.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's when I began intense research around what exactly are the truths behind Gen Z's.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got 17 niece and nephews now that are all Gen Z.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I literally gathered them together and I'm like, okay, uh, you guys are gonna tell me what you want.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when they began talking to me about what they would like to see in a brand, I knew we didn't have any brand out there that could do that was currently doing what they wanted.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: For example, they wanted obviously an affordable, accessible, and experimental brand that is very fun and that allows them to be who they are plus more.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in addition to that, they wanted unconventional kind of branding, something very bold and very, very bright and colorful.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then we take all those pervasive feedbacks from all of them and then from all their friends as well, about 40 of them.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how our market research actually started.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: So for one year after that, I pretty much visited over 40 Sephores across Canada and the US trying to understand how Gen Z really shop.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: We learned very quickly that very few of them went to Gen Z to Sephora or to Shoppers Drug Mart or even Altar in the US to buy fragrances at the store.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: They prefer to buy other cosmetics at the store at Altar or whatever the case might be, but they don't just buy fragrances in there.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: They prefer to shop online and get recommendations from their friends.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's this that was a starting point for us.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we started consulting them and we built this board of directors, about 40 of them, all Gen Z and colleges, you know, doing their master's program, undergrad studies, and we presented about 10 different ideas and and inspiration that we had.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Then they selected three out of the 10, and that's how we started the the fourth generation of fragrance that we we launched.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: So if Baron 3910 were the three they selected out of 10, right?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then we started making formulations around each of those fragrances around the the story that we we wanted to reflect, and we sampled that with them over the course of another one year.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's incredibly tough actually to manage that process.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I think at the end of the day, when we launched uh summer 2022, we we we were sold out the first one month that we launched.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was a small batch, but we wanted to test the market, and that's when we knew there was an opportunity here for us to communicate the brand to to Gen Z and some of the friends and use what of now to spread the news.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that we've extremely differentiated, and I think you must have seen that on I love your branding.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so I'm so OCD around not only creation of the fragrance itself, uh, which has to be truly original, but how we communicate it, which is branding, which is my background.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I worked in business development for over 10 years, so I wanted to do something very unique, very different, very creative, uh, very experimental, and very experiential.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and we wanted to tell the story from you getting our box to reading our story.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we just wanted everything to kind of fit together.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that's a very long answer to your question, but that's how we approached Gen Z and we continue to do that on a week-to-week basis.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: It makes sense.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I I think that for me, I I mean, it's it's difficult to understand how Gen Z really just thinks about everything, but I love that you went to the you know to the root level and you really f tried to figure out, you know, what do they resonate with, what's their vibe, because oftentimes I, you know, I don't understand it even with like something like skincare, as the you know, well-versed as I've become in skincare.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I even with that, I'm like, I don't know how Gen Z shocks.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: So like I it's very interesting.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, I want to actually, I I want to shift the conversation a little bit because we were talking earlier a little bit about this, the clean aspect, right, of fragrance and the fragrance industry as a whole.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: And you made a very, very good point.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: And and that's the fact that there is no real definition of this word.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's no definition, there's no real, I mean, not that I know of, at least, you know, there's no like, here's a list of things you always have to do to make something clean.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I would love to just get your general viewpoint on the industry when it comes to creating like, because you you've created something vegan, you know, it's clean, it's really, really good in terms of quality, but then you know, what were some of those like war stories, some hurdles maybe that you encountered, you know, trying to make something clean?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: Was there was there a point where you were like, what, you know, how do I get around this or something like that?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think the the major problem for us is when you determine or you you create a brand around being clean, you're gonna limit your ingredients from say 10,000 to about 300.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's really, really hard for perfumers and for us in the creative process, then to work with 300 ingredients rather than like 10,000.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: And in my opinion, that's pretty much what every perfumery is going to face.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: The limitation of ingredients that you can use that is accepted under the EU regulations, FDA and ELT Canada, which is so strict around ingredients and perfumery and just in beauty products generally, and also aligning with the requirement of infra.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: So infra is a regulatory body in perfumery.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: For us, we the approach we took was when we decided we're gonna be a clean fragrance brand, we understood we're gonna have to work with limited ingredients, and then we're gonna have to be very uh creative and very thoughtful in how we use the ingredients themselves.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all our formulations as a consequence have less than I'll say 20 ingredients, but we're very meticulous in how we use ingredients to create magical notes.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: If we're like a different brand, uh, I'm not gonna name any, but there are quite a number of them out there that are just fragrance houses or beauty houses that have this handle of ingredients that they use.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's it's amazing because they have a lot of substitutes.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: For us, the cost of clean ingredients a little bit higher.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we we use organic alcohol actually to sugarcane alcohol in our own fragrance.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: So again, it just makes the unit price very expensive.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I think as an industry, every fragrance house that classifies themselves as a clean fragrance brand would always face that problem of limited ingredients in formulation.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's just no way around it.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think they would have to define what clean is in their own eyes.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And and for us, it's it's about protecting the environment, it's about helping, ensuring that your skin is not damaged in any shape or form.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's also ensuring about that we have greater education so people really know what exactly clean is.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you check our website, we don't we don't consider this as a competitive advantage.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's not, it's just the right thing to do to build a sustainable future.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: That makes sense.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's crazy how many like ingredients you can't like that.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: It get it gets narrowed down to 300 from 10,000.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's that blew my mind when you said that.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's like you know, really.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty modern that it's probably gonna be like like 500, but I think that to the the one I know that I keep track of is probably about 300.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's in our own palette, and we don't use all the 300, we'll probably use about 75 out of it.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, that's incredible.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's like telling an artist, like, um, yeah, you can forget about like 90% of the spectrum of color, you know, like this is what you have to work with.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: So make something beautiful.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I really hats off to you, you know, if I mean for doing this.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: This is you've really created something magical here.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I really mean that, you know, because I'm like I said, you know, I'm a very picky consumer with my own fragrances, and it's very hard for me to find.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: And when I really resonate with any scent, and I know a lot of you listening out there might be able to relate to this, when I re when I personally resonate with something, it just becomes a part of like the DNA of my life.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's part of me at that point.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's incredible.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, that's how I am.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, as a consumer, that's how I am, and I know there's a lot of people like me.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of millennials are like this, you know, from what I've noticed.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I mean, I use it every day and I love it, and I think it's a it's it's just something that, you know, that's the hard part for when I look at the perfume and the fragrance world, I think that's the tough part.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: Where how can you enter a consumer's life in a way that it you're there to stay at that point?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because they're really attached now to that fragrance.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: It you created this with your own story in mind and the and the romantic story that you explained.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: But for me, like if A has become part of my story, you know, my everyday journey.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it's and every time, you know, I get a a whiff of it or a smell or whatever it is, it reminds me of whatever I am thinking of.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like building memories, you know what I mean?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I love.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I'm just very curious.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of memory did that trigger for you?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for me, this was really reminding me a lot of my teenage years because we used to vacation a lot in very summery areas and we were moving around a lot.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: My father was an academia, and I just remember going to just not even like full beaches, but these random waterfronts a lot of times and just sitting there genuinely like reading a book or like you know, playing with rocks or whatever I could do to pass the time.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: And but I loved those moments, you know what I mean?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: They were quiet moments for me, and that's what it invokes.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, that's the those are the memories that come to me.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's it's interesting you mentioned that because I I recall when I I got my heart broken.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: The only time uh I was actually I went to the B, we leave the very close to the beach house.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I I was actually in there, and that's when I wrote the formula for well, I wrote the inspiration and the brief for events.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh! Okay, well then it definitely comes across, you know.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: That was 2009, by the way.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, it's honestly it's like a message in a bottle, like that's what it feels like, you know, when you discover a great scent, and that's that's what I've experienced with your brand.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm I'm such a fan.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: But I just want to I want to say thank you so much for your time.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: This has been lovely chatting with you.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I really for everyone listening, I the the entire you know, brand will be tagged in all of our concept art.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: But I really encourage you guys, you know, I know there's a lot of stuff on TikTok, you know.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think Femi and I discussed that yeah, but really take that journey, you know, find what resonates with you.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I promise, you know, that's a better experience than having like 500 different scents because I personally think that, at least, you know, from my perspective, because when you really connect to it when you connect to something, it it just makes it more special.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much, Femi.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: This was such an honor.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I I really champion you for doing what you're doing.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's beautiful.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for having us.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And let us know when you're in Toronto.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we'll be more than happy to bring you to our lab and you can try things out.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe, maybe even make your own fragrance.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh oh my gosh, yes, that would be amazing.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm gonna I'll I'll try it, but you know, I'll probably need a lot of guidance from you.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: But absolutely, thank you so much.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not a problem.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, feel free to reach out anytime.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, again, thanks for having us.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: Hey guys, so I hope you love that episode.
• 34:21
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• 34:26
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• 34:28
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• 35:25
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