We believe in something and aren't afraid to say so

You're here, if not because of Sarah herself, then at least because of the way she does things.

When I began writing for 4160Tuesdays two years ago, I immediately realised that most people who buy fragrance from us, and many of them buy regularly, do so because they like how the business is run just as much as they enjoy the perfumes.

And I often tell Sarah that it's her, and in a way it is, but it has ceased to be only her. The business is built around her vision of being unafraid of being who we really are. This is visible in the team she has chosen, people who care about others and the state of the world, and in the products she makes, which are adventurous and never try to be perceived as anything other than what they are.

In a world where the enemies are encroaching on every part of our lives, in the form of big corporations, basket-case billionaires, AI's infestation of all we hold dear, and the rise of misplaced hatred (it's not lost on me how dramatic that sounds, but nonetheless, I believe it to be true), I like being part of a business that doesn't bend to the rubbish we're being fed, the stuff that says only profit and self-centred views are to be rewarded and admired.

I've tried to look several times at our competitors (Sarah has corrected me on this; we are not competing in the indie perfumer industry, we are supporting each other), and it would seem we don't have one true competitor. This is even more surprising given the fact that there are now 15,000 fragrance launches a year.

There are plenty of artisan perfume brands, and hopefully an ever-growing number, but I haven't come across another with the attitude we have towards perfume. And there are those who teach perfumery, but none with over 470 free films on YouTube, a free Facebook group with 2,500 members, a Patreon perfumery community with memberships from as little as £2 per month, as well as very reasonably priced workshops.

And in our Facebook group, we even allow our members to swap our perfumes, which isn't 'good for business' but is good in every other way.

When I refer to our attitude towards perfume, I'm talking about the way we make our fragrances. We don't look at what scents or notes are trending and try to recreate something similar, nor do we base ideas around things we can sell as sexy, intoxicating or irresistible because that's all utter nonsense. Having said that, a fragrance can absolutely make you feel that way. And THAT is what we're all about, making fragrances that may just possibly make someone feel something special.

Sarah's ideas can come from absolutely anywhere, the more unlikely, the better. The one place they don't come from is thinking about what might sell best. Uh-oh, probably not 'good for business' either.

And we never take ourselves too seriously. We make fragrances that we are proud of, our customers enjoy wearing and sometimes even win us awards, but then we go and name them things like Tart's Knicker Drawer, Up the Apples & Pears or Hammersmith Tea & Biscuits. Because why call a fragrance Formidable, for example, when you could call it Mother Nature's Naughty Daughters? This invites the name to be part of the story too.

Even when we do launch a fragrance that people call sexy, Sarah names it ironically.

I'd be mad to dispute that the biggest reason people buy from us is that they love the fragrances Sarah makes, how they make them feel and the stories they tell. But there's a significant second reason, one that I reckon converts a lot of customers into fans, and it's that we're unafraid of swinging our legs round and jumping down from the fence.

We're not interested in going along with something purely because we might offend (it's never our intention, but it won't keep us quiet). We talk about the things we feel are important to us, our customers, society and the environment. Is that the responsibility of a perfume company? You better believe it is. Saying nothing will lead us nowhere good, and those who believe we should keep politics out of business need to realise the two things have never been separate.

My gut tells me that most of the time Sarah speaks out, it's because she finds it harder not to. It's in her nature. She doesn't do it because it's good for business, but thankfully it often is. Our greatest sales peak was the day she talked on LBC about how awful Brexit was going to be, and the second one was when she wrote in the Guardian about how awful Brexit actually was.

This could be a lesson for businesses who want to say something but aren't sure: go for it; you will attract the right people. And maybe if others had been more vocal about the impact Brexit would have on small UK businesses and joined her the first time round, the second occasion wouldn't have even arrived.

Calling out nonsense and never suffering fools feels like a fitting way to describe Sarah's behaviour. For example, when talking about pheromones in perfume became a bit of a trend, from an (unethical) business perspective, it would have been easy to cash in on that, but Sarah openly called it out for the foolishness it was.

Or recently, people have been blaming IFRA for banning all the materials they love, and just about everything else that's wrong with the perfumery industry. And again, Sarah called this out, but not only that, she spent time explaining how it works and that IFRA actually spends time trying to save things from being unnecessarily banned.

Then there's AI. Isn't that going well? It's doing the complete opposite of saving humanity, as I'd once hoped. There's growing evidence that it's actually pretty inefficient as well as being harmful and unethical. Sarah has been against it since day dot. It's stealing creatives' work and threatening the future of creativity, making us less interesting and less capable of independent thought by forcing it upon us, unless we fight against it, which is what Sarah has been actively doing. Perhaps a little too actively at times, like when she was asked to relax on it a bit on her Saïd Business School programme.

We support Hope Not Hate and wear their hoodies to work. It's not about perfume, it's about what we think is right.

If we offend the occasional numpty, so be it.