Founder's Perspective
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As an interior architect, one of the most important things you learn is how to look. That sounds simple, but it goes beyond whether you like a space or not.
Looking means understanding a space before thinking about what you need from it. What is already there? What are the limitations? How do people actually use it? And most importantly, what problem are you trying to solve? Only when you have looked properly do you start to see the possibilities. A ready-made idea rarely works. The space may offer possibilities you hadn’t thought of, but also sets limits. The question, space and requirements have to come together. And as you find the answers, they need to make sense. Why this choice, in this space, for this particular question? A solution shouldn’t just look good, it needs to work. You look, question, explore and gradually understand what matters and what doesn’t. What needs to be there, and what can be left out. Less is more may be an old design principle, but the thinking behind it has always stayed with me.
After ten years as an interior architect, I moved into fragrance distribution, where I spent more than sixteen years. I thought I had left designing behind. Looking back, I took more of that with me than I realised. I found myself asking the same questions, now about brands, retailers and markets. Why does a brand work in one store and not in another? Why can a decision that seems logical for a brand create problems for a distributor? Over time, you start to see connections. You notice something and sometimes only years later understand why it mattered. You also notice when something doesn’t quite make sense, even when everyone else accepts it as normal.
I still look at how the fragrance industry is changing and try to understand what those changes mean. The market is consolidating, brands are selling directly to consumers and retailers are becoming distributors. I understand the logic behind many of these decisions, but still want to understand what they change. Does a larger portfolio really make every brand stronger? What happens to retailer relationships when a brand sells directly? And what happens when more distribution ends up in the hands of fewer companies? I don’t have all the answers. But “this is simply where the market is going” has never felt like a good enough answer to me.
What makes sense for one company may make no sense for another. Context matters. Together the question, the circumstances and the choices you make have to make sense. Something isn’t automatically right because it works somewhere else or because more companies are doing it. Just as in design, I eventually want to get back to the essence. What is the actual question? What really matters? What are we trying to achieve? And what can we leave out?
Looking back, the move from architecture to distribution and now into strategy feels more logical than I once thought. The subject has changed, but apparently my way of thinking hasn’t.
