A weekend of artisans and indies supporting each other
We’ll be in Stockholm tomorrow.
Nick and I will be in Stockholm this weekend for the Polaris indie perfume event, run by the indefatigable Saman, uniting artisan perfume makers from around the world.
On Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th November, we will have tables at the Downtown Camper Hotel in Stockholm (we are NOT camping, despite the name) and looking at the weather, we’re not planning to leave the building. That’s fine though because so many of our friends will be there with us. On Friday 28th, while the world will be flooded with Black Friday emails, and shops will be rushed for “unmissable” bargains, we will be sitting with our mates in welcoming, informative presentations. We’ll meet Pochpac, our friends and bottle suppliers, and Harry Sherwood, who had his first job at 4160Tuesdays and is now one of the world’s best materials suppliers to artisan perfumers. We’ll be joined by our chum Silvia Yonkova, owner of Rose Overdose, whose Bulgarian rose fields we visited in 2023, for a workshop on Bulgarian natural materials on Sunday afternoon.
This is a community with a great deal in common. We share news, opinions and materials; we give clients and customers to each other if we don’t have what they need and we know someone who does. I’ve trained a bunch of them to make perfume, and many belong to our Scenthusiasm online community at Patreon. We might even get Leo Crabtree turning up with his brand, Beaufort London. He was there last November, but couldn’t make it in May because he was on tour including playing Glastonbury with The Prodigy. Indie perfumery is his hobby. Other artisan perfumes are also designers, artists, musicians, writers, photographers and composers. It’s really not all about the sales figures.
The artisans like me - makers who own our own means of production - and indies like Leo, who own their own brands and employ perfumers to make the fragrances they want, have more in common with the megabrands whose fragrances are in every country, every duty free shop, every department store and advertising in every magazine.
Is there a difference between what goes into the bottle when it’s handmade with love or machine-made with efficiency? It’s all perfumery materials and ethanol. One day I’d like to think that physics will identify particles of cherishment and care that make artisan fragrances feel different. For the moment, let’s call it magic. Artisans and indies are a community; we enjoy seeing each other do well.
On that topic, I’ve had a spate of emails and messages this week - AI the lot of them - trying to frighten me into thinking that I’m “losing out”, “getting left behind” and “allowing your competitors to win”. If I ever ask them who these competitors are that they think I’m trying to beat, they usually mention my friends in artisan and indie perfumery. When I tell them that I don’t mind not “winning”, and that these brands are all part of the same movement, not enemies that I want to beat, they are baffled.
I’ve said it before, but here we go again, just in case you’ve never heard it.
There are two kinds of perfume company:
There are those whose aim is to make money, and to do that they find a way to make perfume.
There are those whose aim is to make beautiful original perfume, and to do that we have to find a way to pay the bills.
We just want enough to keep going, and to experience the inner tickle of joy we get when someone tells us how much they love what we do.
The two intentions may produce similar fragrances, but we know that ours feel different.
If you’re going to be spending money this weekend, may I put in a request that you seek out all the creative people who make what they do because they love it, and spend your money with them because they need it to keep making beautiful things. Not just perfumers, all the artisans. Buy locally, because it builds your local economy. Go to your independent coffee shops, gift shops and restaurants. The multinationals have more than enough already, and they magically find ways not to pay tax.
A note on Black Friday.
The term was first used about an American financial crash in the 1860s. It was reintroduced to describe the day people took off “sick” after Thanksgiving in the US. In the 1950s, it was used to describe the day when retailers started to make a profit (to go into the black) rather than a loss (being in the red), the day after Thanksgiving because that was when Americans started shopping for Christmas. During the 1980s, retailers would start to discount that year’s stock ready to bring in the new season’s designs for the following year.
For countries outside the US, where there is no Thanksgiving Day, and we’re all at work like normal, Black Friday has turned into a retail bunfight. Because we have no cultural reference to Thanksgiving, Black Friday with Cyber Monday are only about bargains. Retailers will buy in lower quality stock, especially to pile high and sell cheap. As it is untethered to Thanksgiving it has floated earlier and earlier, from Black Friday Week, to Black Friday Month, and now just fills up space between Halloween and Christmas. By January 2026, homes will be jammed with articles people will look at and wonder why they imagined they needed them.
At 4160Tuesdays, we don’t really join in, but we do recognise that for most people in the UK, this is the time that we buy gifts for others, and for ourselves. For that reason we do have our Trios offers, and our automatic upgrades (buy a 15 and we’ll send you a 30 etc) on perfumes which aren’t in the Retirement Sale. And of course there’s still the Retirement Sale itself: 60% off fragrances which we are having to retire because we can no longer get new supplies of the natural materials we used to make them.
If you got this far, thank you. We shall continue to write about all the exciting things we’re making, but only buy them if you want to. Next week we’re allowing out Lavender Rice.
I never want someone to see one of ours on a shelf and regret buying it. You will not get automatic emails offering discount codes if you’ve left something in your basket. We will not be writing to ask you if you “forgot something” or reminding you that something “caught your eye”. When we send you an email, it will be written by a human because if we care that much about having humans making our perfumes, we think it’s fair to match it with caring about humans doing our illustrations, design and writing.
We’ll report from Stockholm, although I think it’s fair to say it’s going to be fun, friendly and freezing.
All the best,
Sarah.
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