12 years in business
Location: Wellington
Contact Name: Francesco van Eerd
Website: www.buyperfumeonline.co.nz
Business mission and vision:
To create fragrances for people and organisations, mostly beautiful ones but not always.
“Make classic original perfumes and fragrances for women and men”
There’s only three other perfumers in the country, and none of them have their own outlets where you can talk to the person creating the actual perfumes.
Tripadvisor Certificate of Excellence (recently rebranded Traveller’s Choice Award) five years running, with five stars every year.
I love making perfumes
Learning how to become a perfumer in Grasse, France at great expense. Learning how to do business (I had been a teacher all my working life) by going on a six months’ business course. Engaging a business mentor (HUGELY helpful!!!). Creating ranges of perfumes, and designing my own formulas, labels, blurbs, finding an outlet for my products (initially the Underground Market), later shop decorations etc etc.
In 2011, I organised a week long perfumery workshop with a British perfumer of 40 year’s experience. When I started contacting potential clients in NZ for this workshop I came across another perfumer who had recently conducted a week long perfumery workshop, conducted by a (-nother) British perfumer with 40 years experience, and her workshop had been sold out and had been a great success. this meant that the -already very small- New Zealand market for perfumery courses had probably been completely exhausted with no more new customers that would be wanting to do mine. And to top it all of, her name was (get this!) FrancescA! Talk about bad news…. Anyway, after being depressed and ‘stuck’ for a day I decided to go ahead after all. And guess what? Against all odds I managed to find 16 customers, the course went ahead and it was a great success (And as I later discovered, the other course had NOT in fact happened because the other british perfumer had unexpectedly died before the course could happen! No idea why the other perfumer had said all of that…..?)
I discovered a lonely and hardly used ‘meeting room for rent’ in the old Skyline building at the top of the Cable Car and asked the landlord to rent it to create a ‘Victorian Perfumery’. He was not impressed but after three months reluctantly agreed on the condition that I ‘don’t ask him to stay long term’ as he had other plans for developing the building. I agreed but started beautifying the place immediately. Every six months or so the landlord warned me that I wouldn’t be able to stay and to not spend any more time and money improving the place. I agreed but went ahead with my improvements anyway, effectively ignoring his advice I suppose… After three years of stubbornly adding further improvements at significant cost, and him saying every six months No, you can’t stay here, No you don’t fit into my picture, No you won’t be able to afford it, No I’ve got all the space allocated, No the development doesn’t allow for a perfumery etc etc, he finally came to me (!) asking if I wanted to stay… 🙂 Hoorah! :”The steady drip wears down the stone”.
I’m still in business after 12 years, and despite 2 1/2 years of COVID stagnation resulting in losing 95% of my customers (cruise ship tourists). And earning Tripadvisor Traveller’s Award five years running (six actually if you count Covid) with five star ratings every single year.
Having achieved all of that without, to this day, ever doing any advertising.
Box manufacturers, raw materials suppliers, bottle manufacturers, labelling businesses, accountant, employment advisors
I’m training him up to be able to take over more of the business as I grow older
Have a look on Tripadvisor 🙂 Also I have done fragrance commissions for the national museum Te Papa four times now for use in their displays and exhibitions, some of which travel internationally.
Very Independent, able to schedule my time, work and leisure, kudos from unsought publicity (three TV appearances, as many radio interviews, and 11 print media articles in since starting my business)
I provide yearly prizes for the Sister’s of Compassion volunteer events. Regular donations to Red Cross, Salvation Army, the Heart Foundation.
I’m always keen to partake in events with other local enterprises (regular High Teas with the Cable Top Eatery, fashion show with a kelburn fashion shop, Festival of Lights in the botanical gardens) but most importantly: I would like to think that people leave my shop a bit more positive and uplifted than when they arrived. And the evidence would seem to be that this is indeed the case.
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