A splash of serotonin, on the house.

We need to explain something. We're tiny. Minuscule. We are the opposite of the Tardis, we look way bigger from the outside.

We've started to spot comments like, "4160Tuesdays aren't niche; they're stocked in Lucky Scent!". Niche? We occupy a tiny notch within niche! 

We're extraordinarily grateful that Lucky Scent invited us to be part of their collection back in 2013, and we're the same size now as we were then; we've just got a little bit better known.

The 4160Tuesdays Team

The full time team of three is still Sarah, making the perfumes, Nick, admin, shipping and flowery shirts, Amy, studio manager and trying to keep us tidy. We have Arthur in once a week to make our films, Agni - our resident fragrance world expert - bottling and wrapping two days a week, Jon, when he has a moment. This week Ruby 1 is rejoining part time after doing work experience with us 8 years ago! (Not to be confused with Ruby 2, who worked for us last summer.) And me, Sinead, doing a lot of the writing.

We all fit easily into our building at 42A Raynham Road.

When someone asks us a question, we answer, and we do what we can to give them whatever it is they’re looking for. However, we don’t have anyone available to man a live chat 24/7.

In fact, we don’t even have a dedicated customer service team. We’ve got makers, mixers, bottle-fillers, labellers, packers, writers, designers, tech support, order fulfillers, list managers, event staff, customer support, and much more. All disguised as those 8 people.

Working like our grandparents did

Shocker! There's no one here at the weekend. We work the way our grandparents' generation did. We go home on Friday nights and come back on Monday mornings, unless there's a workshop in the upstairs room, in which case Sarah and Nick will be there on Saturday afternoon.

We’ve got a lot of fragrances, and we do a lot of things, but we’re not big. We don't have a shop, just a space to smell scents if you turn up when we're open.

We like being small

We actually like being small. Growth is overrated and unsustainable. (Feel free to argue.) We don't want the pressure of having to scale up, move buildings, sell through wholesalers, find a warehouse, all those things that tiny businesses feel obliged to do in the pursuit of some spurious kind of 'success'.

If our perfumes bring pleasure, that's good enough. We're true artisans; we own our means of production. We like creative commerce - handmaking lovely things and selling them so we can make more. Sarah set up her first business when she was seven, making bracelets from wooden beads. (Not a good ending though, as her mother made her give everyone's money back. This one is going better.)

And if we’re being honest, Sarah says yes to a lot of stuff. Some of it is ‘good for business’, other things are for the joy of it, the greater good, or just because someone asked her. That’s part of what makes 4160Tuesdays what it is. All this stuff makes us busy, but still not big.

People matter

We treat people; staff, customers, and everyone we meet along the way ethically. We pay our business taxes, and we’re just a small business making unique and interesting artisan perfumes.

Our customers matter. A lot. And we’ll always get back to you just as soon as we can.

About the serotonin

We found out recently that having something to look forward to increases your serotonin levels, and you get a further shot when it arrives.

That's our way of saying that if an order arrives with us on a Friday after the Post Office closes, you can look forward to your perfume reaching you sometime from the following Tuesday.

So if it takes a little longer than someone might like, we like to think we’re providing a little hit of serotonin when the parcel or reply does eventually arrive. Something we could probably all do with a bit of, in this world of instant gratification.

That’s your free drop of serotonin with every order.