#320 - The fragrance industry is more bizarre than you could ever imagine.

Dan from Soma and Insider Parfums joins The Cologne Podcast for a candid, behind-the-scenes look at the fragrance industry that both newcomers and connoisseurs will find fascinating.

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Episode Transcript

Ryan (00:03):
hello everybody, welcome to the cologne podcast I'm mike,
I'm ryan.

Myke (00:07):
We're two best friends.
You know we're going on afragrance journey.
We're smelling fragrances, butalso, upon the occasion, we like
to hang out with fragrance bros.
Yeah, and today we've got dan,our fragrance bro, fragrance bro
, yeah I don't know, is that?

Dan (00:23):
is that an insult or a compliment?
I don't know it's a complimentin the us is a compliment okay,
yeah yeah, okay, and also thingspeople say tech bros, but like
in a really scornful oh that'strue.

Myke (00:37):
Oh, we meant you were our bro, not that you were a
fragrance bro.
Thank you, thank you for thatuseful clarification it might be
copyright infringement as well,because I think there was some
fragrance bros back in the day,was there?
Yeah, I think so good.
So we'll see.
Who knows who cares.
No one listens.
Yeah, no, fucking seeming cool.

(00:58):
Well, first off, before we gettoo deep into some
conversational stuff, I'd likefor us to spray Ryan.
I've made you smell this acouple of times, but we've never
actually sprayed it on.
I'd like for us to spray thisMadagascar from your Insider
line, dan, and kind of chatabout that for a second.

(01:20):
Mike as I spray this on.

Ryan (01:22):
What was your reasoning to bring this back?
Like you smelled this onsomebody before, I can't
remember.

Myke (01:29):
Well, we had a great episode with Dan in the past.
So, if you're listening, youhaven't checked that out.
Go check it out.
And Dan, you were talking aboutthis being one of your releases
and you got me all hopped up onit.
So whenever I went to Assance,I asked some of the guys over
there hey, can you bring me five, 10 mil of that so Dan doesn't

(01:49):
have to ship us a bottle?
And so they.
Our buddy, Chris Fragmental,hooked me up with 10 mil of this
bad boy Cool.

Dan (01:58):
Yeah, well, we did a video with Chris actually in York,
over in his hometown, and whenwe sort of launched it and to be
honest, I'm really pleased withthis, to show you just how
pleased I am with it.
This is the only one that I'vedone this with, but that is
about 300 mil of the oil.

(02:18):
So the oil concentrate, noteven the perfume, that's just
the oil and I am keeping thatfor my personal consumption.
And, yeah, so if I get arrested, no one's going to believe me
that that's personal consumption.
They're going to accuse me.

Ryan (02:35):
I'm quietly confident of that that's a nice bottle you
got it in, is that?

Dan (02:39):
uh, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a vintage lalique flacon,
um and um.
You can see, by the way, Idon't know you this.
I'm aware, by the way, thatpodcasting is not a visual
medium, but for the sake ofyoutube, I can show you the
bottom of that.
You can see all the vanillacrystallizing in the bottom of

(03:01):
it, which apparently is the signI don't know this, but
apparently is the sign of itwhich apparently is the sign I
don't know this, but apparentlyis the sign of high quality
ingredients.
So, yeah, we've swung for thefences with this one and I'm
really happy with the output.
I mean, do you like it?
And be honest, obviously I'drather.
Oh, yes, absolutely.

Myke (03:18):
Yeah, I love it.
I've worn this a few times.
I've gone through the other 5mland then we have a little bit
left here, but I absolutelyloved it.
I got to wear it in Italy,which was great.
I've brought it back.
It is like a very sophisticatedvanilla fragrance.
I had no idea what to expectbecause I don't really have my

(03:40):
finger on the pulse of vanillafragrances.
They're elusive to me becausewhen we first got into it I
thought every vanilla fragrancewould smell like a candle, like
one of these home type candles.
And then when we got deeperinto it and it was like, oh, the
Laytons have the vanilla.
And then we got even deeperinto it and the Musra Bajars had

(04:01):
the vanilla.
Then we started kind ofunderstanding how vanilla could
be more masculine and this, Ithink, is just a great
sophisticated, masculine vanillaand it's got a little bit of
attitude to it, but it's notchallenging in any way.
I really enjoy it.

Dan (04:17):
Yeah, I mean.
So I agree with all of that andI think it is a very easy to
wear fragrance.
I am personally not a hugevanilla fan.
I find most vanilla to be toosweet and kind of a little bit
sickly.
Personally, I can't stand TomFord tobacco vinay.
I know it's very popular but Iget a very foodie association

(04:39):
with that fragrance becauseyou've got the vanilla with then
this very kind of claggy driedfruit kind of thing going on and
, and so I find it quitedifficult to get vanilla that is
clean and on its own almost,and quite simple.
So usually it's over, overlysaccharine, you know, too
sweetened.
Um, in this, in this, in well,in and.

(05:01):
And you know I'm not claiming,as everyone will hopefully know,
this is our clone, becausethat's what it is.
It's an interpretation of HenriJacques Blue Vanille, and Blue
Vanille for me is not a terriblysweet vanilla, it's vanilla
with a little bit of pepper, abit of tobacco, a little

(05:21):
carnation, which makes it quite.
It's not bitter by any stretchof the imagination, but it's not
sort of cakey and like reallysort of overly gourmand, which
is what I love about it and Ithink it's, I think it's perfect
on its own.
I like to wear it, but I thinkit's absolutely brilliant to
layer with other fragrances,because sometimes the addition

(05:41):
of a bit of vanilla can give youa bit of I guess guess dynamism
with fragrances.
And I listened to your episodewith your friend talking about
layering imagination with.
Well, he was talking aboutlayering imagination with
Insidious, which I thought wasfantastic, but it does occur to
me that either imagination orInsidious would work very well

(06:01):
with this as well, because itjust gives it a little bit of
base.
Yeah, so I might even try thattomorrow.
I hadn't thought of it, but Iquite like pairing it with a
rose fragrance.

Ryan (06:12):
Well, you had said something about a carnation and
stuff like that.
Look, I'm not educated enoughon this stuff, but when I
smelled this, I immediatelyliked it.
And the reason why I liked it,though, was like do you get a?

Dan (06:34):
honeysuckle vibe to some degree to this.
I don't.
I, I seem to get that and Ilove that and, like credo, has
that kind of vibe too, yeah, so,so I mean, I I don't think it's
a huge leap from vanilla to tohoney uh, to honeysuckle, if I'm
honest and the carnation doesgive it a little bit of florals.
So I think carnation cansometimes be a bit minty, which

(06:58):
is weird, but it doesn't feellike that here.
It just feels almost like aslightly peppery floral.
Yeah, it just gives it a littlebit of lift.
But I mean, for me the vanillais the star of the fragrance,
right, right, it's vanilla witha few accoutrements, rather than
kind of vanilla as a component.

Myke (07:21):
Yeah, I didn't even pick up floral until you said the
carnation.
Then I was like whoa, okay, nowI kind of smell the floral
aspect of it, but I always justkept saying it's like, oh, it's
like this spicy vanilla, like ifum vanilla wasn't, didn't have
a you know what I keep sayingcarnation?

Dan (07:41):
I don't mean carnation, I mean geranium.
Oh, okay, okay, and that's whyI said minty Geranium has that
sort of mintiness to it.
I don't know why I've gone offon carnations.

Myke (07:53):
Well, it's light for you over there.

Dan (07:57):
Yeah, it's pushing 830.
Our bad.

Myke (08:02):
Yeah, your bad, yeah yeah.

Dan (08:07):
Yeah, anyway, so anyway, so sorry.
Yes, geranium and it's geraniumcan be quite, uh, minty.
So, um, there's a frederickmaul.
Um, I could forget what it'scalled.
It might just be calledgeranium, uh, or geranium
something or other, but itbasically smells like toothpaste
, like minty, bright toothpaste,if that very uh, odd story.

(08:28):
Um, oh, I can't remember whothe perfume is by now.
Uh, I'll have to look it up.
But basically, I did a reviewon my instagram of this geranium
uh, it's geranium pommassure isis the name of the perfume.
Um, and it's a dominique ropionfragrance for frederick mao,

(08:49):
and I did a review.
I said, christ, this justliterally smells like toothpaste
, um, like like a sort of like a, like a mouthwash, kind of
intense minty toothpaste,toothpaste.
There's not much more to it.
And somebody who appeared to bedominique ropion basically

(09:10):
started fucking giving me shitabout it, like you know,
literally commenting on it andthen and then stalking my other
profiles and saying this is adupe-loving, fucking sicko.
And the reason was it turnedout it wasn't even the real
Dominique Ropion.
Oh, I'm disappointed Somefucking lunatic who gets

(09:33):
offended on behalf of DominiqueRopion and goes around
pretending to be him.
I mean, honestly, the fragranceworld is bizarre, really
bizarre.

Myke (09:45):
It is definitely bizarre.
It is the amount of people,like you said who get offended
on behalf of other people is sostrange to me.
I don't get it well it's, it's.

Dan (09:58):
It's a very interesting, I think.
I think it's a reallyinteresting psychological sort
of thing, right, where peoplestrongly identify with a brand
and they've decided to invest alot of emotional energy in this
brand or this perfumer and andoften they've invested a lot of
money in that as well right, sothey don't want to hear bad

(10:20):
things said about them becauseit they take that as a personal
sort of criticism.
So, like these guys who reallylove zirjoff, who are obsessed
with the brand and have tattoossometimes have tattoos, yeah
indeed, yes indeed, I, I I haveno idea what that is about.
I think that I mean, I actuallyI ranted about that on our, on

(10:41):
our podcast.
I think that was absurd.
But you know, these people haveinvested huge amounts of money
in buying Zerjoff and for themto hear someone say something
shitty about them it feels likea personal attack on them, and I
think you know, a lot of peopleare overly invested in sort of

(11:04):
their identity as part of somesort of brand and I personally,
I think it's a terrible thing todo, because if you, if you do
that, then you lack the abilityto to critique anything they do.
So for zirjoff, I sort of quitelike quite a lot of zirjoff
perfumes and I sort of hatequite a lot of them and thatoff
perfumes and I sort of hatequite a lot of them.

(11:24):
And that's okay.
You know, that should be okayand that's a healthy approach to
a brand Saying well, this Ilike, this I don't like Because
it's perfume.
It's all subjective, right.
I mean Absolutely yeah.
So, but these sort of fanboys,these, what do you call them?
That's amore fanboys.
They will get really fuckingbent out of shape if you say

(11:48):
anything negative about anyZerjoff Perfume.

Myke (11:52):
Very strange behaviour.
So, on a side note, I guess Ishouldn't get a Soma tattoo then
well, you can if you want, butas your attorney, I advise
against it.

Ryan (12:08):
Follow-up question because I was thinking the same thing.
I was like would you, ifsomebody got a Soma tattoo,
would they at least get a freebottle out of it or something?

Dan (12:19):
No, If they got a Soma tattoo, I would tell them to get
their fucking heads checked.

Ryan (12:28):
Don't show them the back piece, Mike.

Myke (12:35):
Oh my God, I have a giant, axiom bottle back piece.

Dan (12:39):
Nice, I mean if you're going to, yeah.
So I mean to sort of precede myopinion, which I gave on our
podcast.
But as far as I'm concerned, ifyou have a brand tattoo, what
you're doing is you'resurrendering any sort of
critical thought and you'resaying I trust this brand to
always represent me, it doesn'tmatter what they do in the

(13:00):
future, and I think that's avery dangerous thing right,
because yeah nothing lastsforever.
But you know, on the on the flipside, a lot of friends of mine
have got perfume tattoos oftheir favorite perfume, and I
think that's very different,right?
So james, who I do podcast with, has got a bottle of fahrenheit
tattooed on him, and I lovethat because fahrenheit exists

(13:23):
as a thing, right?
Yeah, fahrenheit is not goingto be well, I mean, they may
reformulate it and such, but thebottom line is that original
fahrenheit stands for somethingthat meant something important
to him.
But you know, it's like gettingtesla tattooed on you.
I mean.
Well, who would do that?

Myke (13:44):
I mean, what it turns out elon musk is a fucking nazi.
I mean, for goodness sake,there's definitely I mean
imagine, because the uh tesla,um uh demographic like target
demographic has completelyflipped, completely.
Yeah.
So imagine, all the people whooriginally were so sold in are

(14:06):
now like oh my god, they're likehey, I, I bought this when elon
was cool I literally, yeah, Iknow somebody personally, who's
like we?

Dan (14:15):
can't wait to fucking get rid of this car oh yeah yeah,
yeah, yeah yeah I mean, and andI don't wish to sort of uh
politicize your podcast in anyway- no, no, no.
I mean, it's just an example ofsomeone saying well, I'm going
to get this thing tattooed on mewithout any understanding or

(14:35):
knowledge of what that thing isgoing to represent in the future
.
And I think that to me says youhaven't thought this through.

Myke (14:43):
So I should get an insidious tattoo, and not
because I will let insidiousrepresent me.

Dan (14:51):
Okay, forward yeah, if, if you're going to get yes, you can
do that.
I, I mike, I think it's a greatidea um.
See, there we go just you know,don't sue me in the future if
you decide it's a bad idea look,I think you just need to do
like what it was, like uh,caesar's palace or something.

Ryan (15:12):
Somebody's wanting to get an insidious uh tattoo on their
forehead.
They get a bottle for life orsomething.
Oh my god.

Myke (15:17):
So they get 150 tattoo and then he's got to ship out
bottles for this, just becausehe's a lunatic yeah, it's
advertising for the rest oftheir life.

Dan (15:29):
Yeah, I think it's a bad advert if I'm it's true.

Myke (15:33):
Yeah yeah, it's almost like they should pay you because
it's gonna create negativeoutlook on the brand.

Dan (15:42):
Yeah, I mean, look so.
So I feel the need to issue adisclaimer that under no
circumstances should anyonelistening to this get any tattoo
of any soma or insider parfumsbottle.

Ryan (15:55):
Oh yeah do not do it.
No way.
We'll have todd edit that tomake it sound like you said to
do it.
Yeah, I'm kidding yeah, andit'll.

Myke (16:04):
We'll use ai to make you say you'll get like a special
affiliate link or something.

Ryan (16:11):
Yeah, definitely do not get a fucking tattoo, yeah, of a
fucking very cruel, um, butyeah, so the the um.

Dan (16:21):
Madagascar we're really happy with.
We made one, so we trailed it abit.
Obviously, we spoke about it onthis podcast before we released
it, spoke about it with ChrisFragmental as well, and in our
first production run we made, Ithink, 57 bottles or something

(16:42):
like that.
Wow, and they sold.
The whole lot sold out in 40minutes which is brilliant.
That's amazing so well, it, itwas great and it sort of uh, it
wasn't a sort of deliberate hey,let's, uh, let's artificially
create like this kind of timepressure kind of thing.
Um, so we made a small batchreally to see whether there was

(17:06):
actually appetite for it,because it was reasonably
expensive to make and that soldout quickly.
So then we made a second batch,but that was a much bigger one.
So now we have stock and it'sall good.
But yeah, that one's doingquite well.

Ryan (17:21):
It is really, really nice.
Well, I was going to say, likeI've told you before, like to be
proud of, like insidious, is areally great one.
I would say the same for thisone again.
Just growing up in the south,we have like honeysuckles
everywhere and this does remindme of that for some reason, and
I'm always like a huge fan ofthat smell.
It smells great.
It does not smell cakey vanillalike you were talking about.

(17:43):
It smells really good.
This is pretty, genuinely gooddude.

Dan (17:49):
Love it Good, I'm glad you think that.

Myke (17:53):
Yeah, I feel like it is slightly more of an attitude.
So I feel like it might be fora mature audience, like more
mature, maybe 25s and up, ish,yeah, you know, because there's
a, there's a little bit of uh,you know, brass tacks with it
that you kind of gotta you kindof gotta rock a little bit.

Dan (18:15):
But yeah, it is really nice interestingly, I don't know
anything really about thedemographic of the people we
sell perfumes to.
We don't.
I don't think we capture ageanywhere.
I mean, I can, I can tell.
I can tell you that themajority, but not an
overwhelming majority, the it'slike about 60 70 the majority of

(18:40):
our sales are to men, right, um, but that's about all I could
tell you.
You know, I don't really knowabout the age thing.
It's interesting you say that,though, because I like this.
I find insidious for me thatthe whole Aventus profile it
makes me feel when I wear it.
It makes me feel like, not likeI'm, I'm 25 again.

(19:07):
Well, sort of it makes me feellike I'm trying to recapture
that and and it almost makes mesort of not want to wear it for
that reason.
Whereas this I think you'reright it definitely has a mature
edge to it.

Myke (19:23):
It's like the older guys that wear like the bedazzled
jeans with like the jean backpockets that have the bedazzled,
you know that type of thing.

Dan (19:31):
Is that what you're?

Myke (19:31):
feeling like Well, yes, do you wear those.

Dan (19:35):
Yes, yes, I do.
No, I do not, to be honest.
If you ever see me wearing them, it's you know I've been
kidnapped and I'm trying tosignal that's a cry To be honest
.
If you ever see me wearing them, I've been kidnapped.
I'm trying to signal that's acry for help.
Yeah, yeah.

Myke (19:52):
Good to know, we'll keep on the lookout.
We'll always be staring at yourback pockets from now on, well.

Dan (19:59):
I was hoping to have made it to Milan this year as well.
Yeah, I know, ryan, you don't'tfly, so you weren't going there
.
Not gonna happen, um, but butuh, I, you know, mike, uh, I saw
the pictures, uh, and all thereels, the infinite fucking
reels from everyone and it itlooked like everyone had a great

(20:21):
time.
But I mean, the reality is I Idon't know where I was at the
point we last spoke, but I triedto make the perfume stuff work
full time for a bit, but itdidn't.
I mean, it's OK, but it's notquite enough to live on.
So I ended up basically gettinganother job.
And so, about the point whereI'd had to commit to sort of a

(20:49):
new job and being at particularplaces and stuff, it just meant
Milan.
I couldn't really ask for timeoff, especially as, almost
immediately that I started mynew job, my wife got really ill
with pneumonia, so I wasbasically at hospital for about
three weeks.
Wow, you know I was trying toexplain to my new boss that no,
honestly, honestly, I'm notnormally just really flaky or

(21:11):
anything.
My wife is really unwell.
No, she does exist, she is areal person.

Myke (21:16):
Honestly, I'm not just making this up oh, yeah, yeah,
and then, then you hurt yourknee again, and or you hurt your
knee oh god, you missed itagain.

Dan (21:26):
Yeah I missed it again.
Yeah, so I I got invited um aspart of the uh the press pack,
don't you know?
Um to um it's a sort of weirdstory actually.
So I met uh um at an event lastyear.
I met uh quentin, uh b, soMarc-Antoine Bauer's brother,

(21:51):
and Quentin, very cool guy.
But Quentin knew that Icouldn't go to Milan this year
and he said look, I've gotsomething for you.
Why don't you come and join usin Milan for this new launch of
Aldebaran, which is their latestperfume?
And I was like this is going tobe brilliant.
You know, this is my first kindof influencer event.
You know all expenses paid, Ifinally made it.

(22:14):
This is going to be amazing.
And so a few days before,unfortunately, I was getting
some washing at the washingmachine, which is a pretty rock
and roll story, I know.
Oh yeah, I was rock and rollstory I know.
I was getting that washing outand I twisted and and there was

(22:34):
a ripping sound from my leftknee so I tore the meniscus in
my knee.
I could not walk at all forabout a week, meant I had to
miss Milan for a second time.
So next year Exxon's it'shappening, definitely,
definitely 100.
Good, it's because, yeah, I'vegot to meet you in person, man

(22:54):
absolutely, and I'll be able tobring you all our new perfumes
and such at that point.

Ryan (23:00):
Yeah, I do have a question about this.
Maybe this is I don't know ifthis is too much for you or not,
but would you think out of Imean I'm just basing this off of
what I've smelled from the somaline and from from this line in
particular, but it's like doyou think this is one of your
more elegant pieces that you'vedone?
Um?

Dan (23:21):
I'm gonna say yes, but I mean the.
The reality is it's a clone,right, it's a clone of a very
elegant perfume, and so I thinkyou know the reason I say yes,
it's one of our most elegantperfumes is just because the
original is so unbelievablyelegant.

(23:41):
It's beautiful.
I mean, yeah, this is more Imean.
So I think people get very bentout of shape about clones, for
understandable reasons, but Ithink there is a real skill to
what our perfumer has done hereand created and to make

(24:02):
something.
You know people say clone it'slike a, it's a dirty word, it
means cheap, it means nasty, allthose kind of things.
But actually, you know, I thinkanyone trying this would never
say this smells cheap or nastyor synthetic or any of those
negatives, which I think istestament to the skill of the

(24:25):
perfumer that's done this.

Myke (24:28):
Yeah, there's a subtle smokiness that it kind of dries
down into, which is so nice andI love.
It's like my favorite part ofthe fragrance.
It's slowly getting there.
I don't know if you're thereyet on yours, but there's, like
this, just this hint of warmsmokiness that I'm obsessed with
it is.

Dan (24:49):
Yeah, I think it's brilliant.
I you know I'm not to blow myown trumpet, because again I
there's no well, there's noskill.
I I've not demonstrated anyskill in this, you know um so I
can say that I, you know,full-throatedly believe it's
brilliant.

Ryan (25:05):
So you know, I think we had a conversation.
We have this thing called likefirestar chats and our patreon.
I want to say we had somethinglike similar conversation, like
is there a skill?
Like somebody like you knowsaying I want something like
this?
I think there is.
It shows that you have a goodnose for something the yeah.

Myke (25:21):
The remark was was um, you know there are people, there
are um, oh, creative directorsthat are so good at directing
that it's part of the art andit's not just like it's not the
steve jobs, like make me a phonebut cram everything into the

(25:42):
phone and I need it done bysaturday.
You know it's not like that, youknow there's like something in
there to it and I think that waskind of.
The question was worded in away where they were talking
about music producers and howmusic producers they are not the
musicians, but they know somuch about it that they're able
to direct in such a good way.

Dan (26:00):
Well, I think the archetype for that is actually Roger Dove
, right?
So I will go on record assaying I have never believed
that Roger Dove was personallythe perfumer.
What I believe Roger Dove is isa brilliant creative director

(26:22):
and marketing impresario, right?
And for me, if I were Rogergerduff, I would say that's enough.
It's enough to be that, yeah,you know, yeah, um, but uh, but
he's sort of, I guess, as partof he's ended up in this
position where he said he's theperfumer, he's clearly uh, this
is probably going to get uh landus in court, but to me he he

(26:44):
clearly isn't.
And and recently he's he'sbrought one of the perfumers out
into the sort of public as like, hey, this guy will be doing
our next fragrances and carryingthe brand on.
But, um, I mean, I've spoken toseveral people in the industry
and and the reality is, I knowwhat company creates the
perfumes for him, and he is thecreative director.

(27:07):
He decides what he wants, hedecides how the lineup is going
to look, he describes the thingthat he wants and someone else
does the creative execution ofit, and I think there is huge
skill and talent in exactly thatcreative directorship thing.
So for me, roger Dove isabsolutely brilliant and what he
does, um I just, I just don'tbelieve personally that he

(27:31):
actually creates perfumes.
Yeah, to me that's not aninsult.

Ryan (27:34):
We we've kind of had the well we I was.

Myke (27:37):
I'm concentrating for both of us, but I think truly we
believe that he was the perfumerearly on it was like easy to
kind of think that because hewould talk about the way he, you
know, yeah, made the fragrancedo this and this when you'd
watch the videos and you'd kindof start believing that, whereas
with tom ford you never thoughtthat tom ford was clearly just

(27:57):
going.
You know what I love?
I love fragrances that remindedme of my childhood in texas and
new mexico, and you know I lovethat blah, blah, blah, so that
sort of a thing too and topiggyback really quickly.

Ryan (28:08):
Like you know, we've kind of viewed, uh, roger dove as
kind of like quentin tarantino'slike kind of like fragrance.
We love the storytelling aspectof it and I'm in the same boat
with you.
Like I don't really care ifhe's a perfumer or not.
Like I love a portion of thefragrances are really really
good yeah exactly.

Dan (28:26):
To me, it doesn't matter whether he is or is not the
person at the sort of organ youknow mixing uh, you know uh,
ingredients together to come upwith the smell, because that's
only part of it.
He's.
He's the guy kind of conductingthe orchestra, and to me that's

(28:47):
that sort of visionary sort ofthing that he and I'm not
comparing myself to Roger Dove.
What I'm saying is, I thinkthat's a valuable thing in and
of itself, arguably as importantas the perfume.
But from my perspective, Icannot claim to have created any
of these perfumes.

(29:07):
I sort of pick the things thatI think I like and that I think
we could do a good job at and asfar as I know, no one else has
done them, and let's go for it.
So we've got.
Have you ever tried Escada AnyEscada perfumes?
We've got.
Have you ever tried Escada AnyEscada perfumes?
Escada Magnetism was a big, bigperfume in the I want to say

(29:33):
90s, but I think it may actuallyhave been released in the early
2000s, but it's like this sortof really lovely sort of cherry
grape no not cherry grape sodasort of smell it's really.
It was very popular and Escadadiscontinued it and I don't

(29:56):
believe anyone else has createda version of that, so we've done
that.
That's awesome, so that one'scoming soon.
But yeah, I mean beyond that,I'm not really adding a huge
amount of value other than sortof saying yeah let's do this.

Myke (30:09):
Let's do this.
Next It'll be brilliant.
Well, let us know.
What are you kind of bringingout?
What have you planned to atleast disclose to us in the
audience?
What are you working?

Dan (30:22):
on yeah, yeah, Okay, yeah, okay.
So I mean on Insider we are.
So, on the back of the relativesuccess of the Blue Vanille, we
have tackled Oud Imperial,which is a very grown-up like
Oud, like quite a pungent butvery grand Oud, and that has

(30:48):
cost.
I mean, that has basicallybankrupted us, and so I'm now
talking to you from the streetso I'm hoping we can get that
one to market fairly soon.
We have recently released theOud which was based on Roger
Dove Ood, and we've got theAmber Ood See if you can guess

(31:16):
what that one's based on andthen we've got the Asgard of
Magnetism, which I don't thinkwe've come up with a name for
yet, although I probably need totell you about how we named.
Do you know this story abouthow we come up with names for
things?
It's pathetic.

Myke (31:34):
Oh, I know how you came up with Insidious and I remember
the….

Dan (31:39):
No, insidious was before we rebranded.
So when we did the rebrand, itturned out it made a lot more
sense for us to order like um,20 different labels like uh at
the same time.
So it's much cheaper.
So instead of saying, right,well, we've got these three

(32:00):
perfumes, so we're going toorder these three um uh sets of
labels, we just let's just do 20.
So we just made up names ofperfumes.
It's like ridiculous names ofperfumes.
So I think of one that's on theshelf I don't know what I was
thinking, but one it was calledFive a Day.

(32:22):
I was like, right, let's justcall that Five a Day.
I was like, why let's just callthat five a day?
I was like why, it sounds allright, let's fucking do that, so
we've.
So at some point we will nodoubt release a perfume called
five a day.
There's no good reason for it,other than we had to order

(32:42):
labels like in bulk.
I love it Honestly, do you?
Do you have?

Ryan (32:50):
an idea, honestly, do you have an idea?
Do you have an idea what thatwould be?
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cutyou off.

Dan (32:53):
Go ahead, no, no, no.
Madagascar was one that I sortof uh dreamt up and it happened
to work.
We were like looking throughthe list of available names that
we had for this and it was likelike Madagascar, that's
brilliant, it's the actualvanilla, brilliant Done.
So we were okay with that one,but five a day, I think that's
going to be a struggle.

Myke (33:18):
Just put it on a random one, yeah.

Dan (33:20):
Yeah Well, we may well do so, and we've got a few more
Soma things coming as well,because we sort of neglected
SOMA a little bit and we try andput the.
So SOMA is more about and we'vedone one or two original
creations on.
There's a bit of a story there.
Actually, we've done one or twooriginal creations on Insider

(33:42):
and these are typically where westarted out trying to create
something and we've gone no,that doesn't work, it's terrible
and we can't get it to work.
But we could take this in thisdirection and create something
slightly different and somethingnew.
So a lot of the ones which are,I think we've got three or four
original creations.

(34:03):
They sort of started off asattempts I can't even remember
what and they smell nothing likethose original sort of
inspirations any longer.
But because we sort of startedwith that in mind, they ended up
being released as originalcreations through Insider, soma.
Everything is, like you know,we try and develop absolutely

(34:26):
everything as a totally originalcreation for Soma.
So we've got three perfumeswhich are pretty well ready to
go.
I say pretty well ready.
I am not happy with at leastone of them and I'm still
arguing with my business partnerwho insists that he thinks they
are ready, but I'm notconvinced they will take longer

(34:48):
to get to market because thewhole process is a lot more
involved.

Myke (34:53):
Can you give us a little taste of what they're kind of
like, what direction they'regoing in, or inspiration?

Dan (35:00):
behind it.
Yeah, I mean so for the SOMAstuff, one of them which is
ready I've probably got a samplearound here somewhere.
Yeah, this one we haven'tdecided on what we're going to
call it yet, but it's got sortof a freshness, a fresh

(35:22):
grapefruit, a little bit likethe grapefruit you find in Roger
Dove Elysium.
It's not like Roger DoveElysium, but if you imagine that
grapefruit note with a littlebit of incense, slightly smoky
incense, and then a sort ofambery cedar base, it's very,

(35:44):
very nice it's.
I I can't tell how popular it'sgoing to be, because I think
this is more, um, I suppose whatyou'd call more niche than than
some of the other stuff we'veproduced through through soma um
.
Another one is a, a very sortof um.
It's quite heavy-handed, uh,floral iris kind of thing, um,

(36:07):
which arguably some people aregoing to say that's quite
feminine.
I think it's very unisex, butagain, much more and I use the
word advisedly but but moreniche, uh, you know, much more
uh, much narrower appeal, Ithink, than a lot of the insider
stuff I guess we can't.

Ryan (36:31):
Do you have names picked out for these either, or is that
something we don't?

Dan (36:35):
no, well, uh, so we're debating that as well, um, but,
um, we, we were actually gonnacreate a separate line, okay,
and uh, not sure what that lineis going to be called.
You know, maybe it's going tobe elegance was one of the words
, but I'm not wild about it butbut we're just going to really

(36:55):
release them as one, two andthree as part of that line.
Oh, okay um, nice, so, um, and,and the idea being they, they
basically all fit together.
If you bought all three, you'dbe covered for most occasions,
kind of thing.
Um, I it's.
As you can tell, the thinkingis not fully formed yet, right?
Um, and we've been working onthese for I mean christ, about a

(37:18):
year already.
So the odds are it'll beanother year before any of them
see the light of day.
In fact, I'll bring them tomilan.
At that point, we should have,yeah, yeah, about about a year
from now, we should have, uh,sample bottles.

Myke (37:31):
That's right yeah, that's uh, oh man.
Oh, I was.
I meant to ask you and Ihaven't uh perused the website.
So do you no longer do 100 mlbottles of Insidious?

Dan (37:47):
We do not no, I get asked for them occasionally because we
rebranded everything in the 50ml bottles and we invested
basically all of our money inessentially the bottles and the
packaging and everything for the50 ml.
We have toyed with the idea ofdoing 100 ml's.

(38:07):
But to do them and to make themconsistent with the 50 ml's, I
mean that's gonna yeah, it'sgonna completely bankrupt us for
for ages.
And, honestly, the feedbackfrom when we did the insidious
in 100 ml it wasn't that popularfor certain.
People preferred to buy the 50um and I think that's because it

(38:28):
was relatively expensive andwe're working on that.
By the way, we are trying toget our prices down because I'm
painfully aware that people arebuying clones.
They go this is very expensiveum.
We're trying to.

Myke (38:40):
We're trying yeah, that's a different beast, yeah.

Dan (38:46):
Agreed.

Myke (38:46):
Agreed.

Dan (38:47):
And we are trying to do that.
But we're also trying to makethe product cheaper.
If we retooled for 100 ml, it'sgoing to be five years before
we can make anything cheaper,because we're not doing this
with anyone else's money.
We don't have investors oranything is money.

(39:08):
We don't have investors oranything.
This is all just uh, you know,we started this, this business,
with kind of uh, about 10 000pounds and um, we've got about
10 000 pounds.
At the moment, we're fuckingrunning really fast to stand
still.

Myke (39:22):
It's really not great no, I mean it makes sense just from
the production standpoint.
You have to first source allthe bottles and then you know
label them and all that stuff.
You have to almost like keepinventory, uh, whereas this it's
kind of interchangeable, right.
You have like the black bottles, the white bottles and then
you're able to.
You know they go with thedifferent.

(39:43):
So it makes sense.
It's just, you know, I I kindof milk through those bottles
pretty quick.

Dan (39:49):
I probably go 50.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, Iknow a few people have mentioned
it, but uh, I just I it justdoesn't work for us at the
moment.
Yeah, it makes sense, it's.
It's amazing people.
People say right, do you dodiscovery atomizers?
Do you do discoveries?
Uh, you know, must have hadthat question a thousand times.
So we do discovery atomizers,do you do discoveries?
I must have had that question athousand times.
So we do discovery atomizers.

(40:10):
The minute you do discoveryatomizers, do you do 2 mil
samples?
Yeah, yeah, what is it?
You're like whatever I'm doing,you just want something else.

Myke (40:23):
Yes, that's exactly how it goes yeah, and yeah, they're
never happy.
I worked, uh, me and a friendstarted a business in a
different industry and peoplewould always say, well, if you'd
produce this, then I would buyit.
Like, you guys really need toproduce this, I'm.
And then we would, you know,create a prototype of that.

(40:44):
And then they'd be like, well,no, we need you to add this,
like if you just did this,instead, we're just like, we're
not going to listen to you guysanymore because you can't make
up your fucking minds yeah, no,not.

Dan (40:55):
Not that I mean something like that, but not that.
Yeah, exactly something likethat, yeah, not that just go
with your gut.

Myke (41:03):
You're doing a good job on it.
So, uh, what's your take on wewere debating this at lunch,
actually, ryan and I what's yourtake on gray market stuff from
your perspective inside theindustry, not just as a consumer
?

Dan (41:21):
So I heard you asking like, where does the stuff come from?
Oh yes, on the podcast.
Um, I mean I'm sort of okaywith with gray market stuff
there's.
So there's a distinction rightbetween secondary markets and
gray markets.
So whenever I see on facebookor whatever a, a bottle of

(41:45):
Insider or Soma for sale, just alittle bit of me dies inside.
I was like oh did you not loveit enough to keep it?
So the secondary markets, ofcourse, but the actual grey
markets where you get like a lotof testers and stuff, I feel
like they tend to come from afew places.

(42:07):
Firstly, you get thesedistributors.
So a lot of brands, even quitebig brands, don't have the
capability to deal with everystore that they want to sell to
and, conversely, the big storesdon't want to deal with every

(42:28):
Tom, dick and Harry from everybrand.
They want to deal with adistributor.
Right, so you'll get adistributor.
There's a big distributor in theUK called Aspects and they
essentially represent a lot ofbrands into retail stores.
So the distributors a lot ofstock passes through

(42:50):
distributors and one of thethings that they end up doing is
giving promotional items andtesters, particularly testers,
go out to stores so they'll beallowed to.
You know you ship to, let's say, you ship to Harrods.
You ship 1,000 bowls of perfume.
There will probably be 100tester bottles to go with it, to

(43:12):
put on the shop floor.
If you're selling to a website,they also get the testers.
They don't need the testersbecause nobody's going to their
store to test them.
So websites are then sellingtesters out the back door or
some sort of middleman betweenthe distributor and the website
is going these people don't needthe testers, I will sell them

(43:34):
out the side.
So you get a load of leakageout of the supply chain simply
by virtue of it all being gearedaround this idea of testers.
And a lot of companies actuallydon't need testers because
they're purely digital suppliers.
So that's how a load of testersget out into the market, um,
and that's not to accuse anyparticular distributor or brand

(43:58):
or whatever.
There's perfectly legitimateways that these things emerge as
sort of gray market testers, um, and and suddenly they're for
sale wherever you look.
Right.

Myke (44:10):
Well, that's good.
That kind of gives us a betterunderstanding of it, because
we've just been slowly piecingtogether what we assumed is how
it went down.

Ryan (44:19):
Well, I mean, I guess Go ahead.

Dan (44:21):
Go ahead.
Well, there may be other routes, but that certainly I have seen
happen.

Ryan (44:26):
What about like non-tester items?
I don't know if you knowanything on that, but it's like
you know they'll make it to a.
You know?
Let's say, we like a bottle ofCredo by Nation A or something
like that, and it's $150 on thesite, but it's not a tester.
Is that just they boughtsomebody's stock that wasn't
selling, or something?

Dan (44:47):
Yeah, I mean.
So that certainly happens a lot.
I mean, um, the way the wayperfume uh retailing tends to
work is they talk about a buyingcoefficient.
So, um, uh, if I'm a retailerand I'm buying, um, nishane
fragrances, I will ask them fora coefficient of, let's say,

(45:11):
three to one, which means I willpay them the retail price for
one bottle but they will give methree.
Okay, so three to one meansthat I'm essentially paying a
third for each bottle and thenwhatever I can sell them for is
profit.
But because they don't pricecontrol, so, like Chanel, always

(45:33):
price controlled very difficultto sell Chanel.
You will find very few sort ofgray market items.
For Chanel they're very, verysort of stringent about price
control.
Niche R&A don't really care, orthey don't have the capability
to price control.
Niche R&A don't really care, orthey don't have the capability
to price control.
So they will sell this stuff atthree to one or four to one in
bulk or whatever.
A five to one, I believe.

(45:54):
Through distributors it can goup to.
So essentially, people arepaying 20 cents on the dollar
for a bottle of this perfume andthen anything they can sell it
for above that is profit.
Yeah, so why not sell it for$150?
If they're not selling, sell itfor $150.
It's still profit.

Ryan (46:17):
I'm kind of asking you this, mike, but knowing this
information does it make youfeel better about the gray
market?

Myke (46:22):
Look, I don't have anything against the gray market
because I don't really haveskin in the game other than the
money I spend on a fragrance,and I don't love spending retail
.
But my point in the episode wasthat people like Chanel and
Dior if they can help it orwhoever Louis Vuitton, they
don't want the overallperspective of the fragrances

(46:43):
being devalued, and so theydon't want the overall
perspective of the fragrancesbeing devalued, and so they
don't want people selling thebottles for cheaper, because
then people lessen the value ofthe product.
Gotcha, and that was my thing.

Dan (46:53):
Yeah, that is absolutely true, and there was a huge
number of Louis Vuitton testersthat were available through
these gray market sort ofsources and they have really
clamped down on that.
So the market now for LouisVuitton sort of grey market
testers has completely dried up.

(47:14):
If you see a tester these days,unless someone has swiped it
from the shop floor, the oddsare it's a fake.
Oh yeah, and you know,interestingly again listening to
that imagination episode I lovethe louis vuitton fragrances.
I'm absolutely obsessed withthem as a brand and part of me

(47:37):
thinks part of me thinks that'sbecause they've done this
brilliantly aspirational thingand the price control.
You cannot get them.
Nobody's getting free bottlesof Louis Vuitton.
Well, someone probably issomewhere, but they represent
this aspirational brand.
Yeah, and I think that's sortof brilliant.
You know, alan, is it AlanRichardson, the guy from Reacher

(48:01):
?
Oh, yeah, yeah, big guy, so bigdude.
Yeah, there's a, there's avideo I've seen of him with a
200 ml bottle of imagination andhe's going I could drink this
stuff, this is my favorite.
Just spray it all over, um, soyeah, there's a strong
association.

Myke (48:19):
That's what I kind of feel like whenever I'm wearing
imagination.
I kind of feel like I look likethat guy, even though I don't.

Dan (48:25):
Yeah yeah, yeah, feel feel about foot tall.

Ryan (48:28):
We just recently filmed a uh, would you like a shooting
competition?
Like you know, it's americaguns, yeah, and uh, oh yeah, we
both, we both show up like kindof like city slickers.
We're like, I've got on myfavorite fragrance it was a
kajal fragrance and then he hadon imagination and man even
through like gunpowder andeverything you could smell this

(48:51):
guy all day long and people werelike god, somebody smells good
over here.
They got like fucking ars ontheir back and shit I mean it's
a great fragrance.

Myke (49:00):
I've been trying to wear it, you know, so that when we do
the one I stand on it, that Ican be like very versed in it.
But I really did enjoy it.
I thought it was a greatfragrance.
I was shocked, I was preparedto hate it.
I love it.

Dan (49:13):
No, I absolutely love it, and there's a sort of stunning
simplicity to it.
Yes, I mean, I'm not sure ifothers get this, but to me it
traces its sort of roots back toChanel Allure Edition Blanche.

(49:34):
I don't know if you know thatone, but the Chanel Allure
Edition Blanche, and thensubsequently Zerjoff did one
called Uden, and then UdenOverdose, and the imagination is
like the perfection of thattrajectory.
So if you sort of put those ina line, they're getting
increasingly evolved and perfectand imagination is like the

(49:57):
zenith of that route.
I love it Absolutely love it.

Myke (50:01):
Yeah Well, it was fantastic and that.
To argue back to the greymarket stuff, that's more what I
was talking about.
As a brand owner, I would beleery of it because you want
people to value your brand.
It's the reason why him and Iboth worked at an electronic
store and you could not get adiscount on Apple products.

(50:25):
Like there's no way you could,because they controlled the
price of that so much.
It was easier to mark down theaccessories, but then you don't
specifically care about thosethings.
So it's like when you reallyhave your handle on what people
are doing with the prices, itallows you to establish what the
value of the brand is.
That was kind of my argument.

(50:45):
But me as a consumer, I'm likeeveryone who goes how cheap can
I get it?
I want it as cheap as possible.

Dan (50:54):
Yeah, and unfortunately, if you're looking to score
anything less than retail, theodds are you're going to end up
with a fake.
These days, because they are souniversally faked, I mean the
fakes, by the way, are justmind-blowing.
You know the new AmouageOutlands.

(51:14):
They came with this threefragrances in the new Amouage
bowls they're round with sort ofknobbly bits on it.
They're a complete departure.
And they have these brilliantengraved plaques on the bottom
and I thought, christ, this iscool.
Maybe they've changed thebottle because people keep
faking them.
I swear to God, within about sixweeks there's fakes on the

(51:35):
market in China.
You can order them from Teemuand they are.
And they smell the same, theylook more or less the same.
I mean, they feel different.
So the Amouage has this reallykind of plush, ceramic sort of
feel to it and the Timu fake.
Me and my business partnerbought one just to see what they

(51:56):
were like and you can tell whenyou touch it, but to look at
them.
If they weren't next to eachother it'd be really difficult
to spot and so many people aregetting had.
And I think the same is truefor the Louis Vuitton.
I would always say to anyonewho says well, where can I get a
deal on this Louis Vuitton?

(52:17):
I'd say don't bother, just buyat retail.
Any saving you're going to makeis not worth the risk of
getting a fake.

Myke (52:25):
any saving you're going to make is not worth the risk of
getting a fake, right?
Yeah, especially because you'restill going to probably cough
up a little bit of money forthose, even if it's heavily
discounted still probablydropping 150 at least yeah, I
mean it's.

Dan (52:37):
So the only way I think you're going to get a discount
on on any of those is if you'vegot like a store-level discount,
where they do like a 10%discount for anything you buy in
the shop.
You might get that.
But honestly, I think they'vedone such a brilliant job with
their branding.
And I noticed you were talkingabout Jacques Cavalier and the

(53:01):
line and the sort of JacquesCavalier perfumes that he's done
.
I mean, he's done all of theseLouis Vuitton perfumes and
there's a sort of there's thisthrough line, through that whole
range, that you can just sortof sense.
The same person created thisand you know, as you step
through this colorful sort ofrange of beautiful bottles, you

(53:22):
go, yep, that feels like alogical progression.
Go, yep, that feels like alogical progression.
Yep, that feels like a logicalprogression.
It's just there's somethingmagical about it.

Myke (53:30):
Honestly, I think they're amazing, see we, we're right at
like the cusp of leaning intothis.
We've started kind of lookingat the perfumers and the lines
that they've done, but it's likewe we do this with cinema all
the time we'll look at the bodyof work from a director and then
we'll understand, yeah, yeah,and we haven't yet like

(53:54):
translated that into fragrances.
But I do think we're startingto kind of get there and, like
you were saying, I like thepassion behind that for you to
see the trajectory of the artform and really appreciate it.
And I think, as as we, slightly, we're getting educated in our
uneducatedness, to slowly kindof get to the point, because

(54:16):
it's not like I want to know thething, but I want to appreciate
the thing, like you just said,like there's something to that,
to feel that and and have thatpassion behind it.
It's inspiring.

Dan (54:26):
I mean, I think there are certain perfumers you can sort
of sense this was probably doneby that person, like you know.
Certainly, a lot of the God,it's completely gone.
Cecile Zerokian stuff, right,tends to be these kind of really

(54:48):
big headbanger ambers with kindof smoky sort of notes.
A lot of the Quentin Beachstuff now tends to be these very
transparent sort of top noteswith this kind of really
bombastic sort of aroma,chemical base and stuff.
So I think it is reallyinteresting to see the body of

(55:12):
work that perfumers do.
But then often I'll look at abody of work by a perfumer and
go, well, I can't see anyconnection whatsoever between
these things.
This is, like you know, thisone's a paycheck.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, if you want to look atpaycheck perfume, alberto
Morales has an enormous catalogof really you know fragrances

(55:35):
that he phoned in.

Myke (55:36):
Yeah, Do you have like you know, we have a couple of
directors that we absolutelylove.
Do you have a couple ofperfumers that are just like
you're, just patiently awaitingthe next thing that they do?

Dan (55:51):
um, so, so, my favorite perfume of all time, and and
I'll I'll give you the simpleanswer.
The simple answer is no, right,okay, and I'll tell you why my
favorite.
The simple answer is no right,and I'll tell you why.
My favorite perfume of all timeis Invasion Bar Bar by MDCI,
and the perfumer is calledStephanie Bakush.

(56:14):
I met Stephanie, she'sabsolutely wonderful.
I had this absolute kind offanboy moment.
I was like get a photo of meand Stephanie.
It's amazing.
But I, every perfume she's madesince then has been something
of a disappointment to me, andso I, you know, I, I, I think I

(56:34):
don't get excited about aperfumer's next release kind of
thing.
Um, and I think, and I thinkthat's sort of somehow ruined it
for me a little bit, I guess Imight, I might get sort of
excited about the next jackcavalier, just because it's
probably going to be in-houseagain for, uh, louis vuitton and

(56:58):
and so it'll no doubt be bebrilliant, um, but no, I think
the perfumer is almost it'salmost secondary to kind of the
creative direction of whateveroh that, yeah, that's a good
thought too.

Myke (57:15):
Yeah, it's kind of.
It's so.
It's a wild world out there.
They stand alone on their own,but then they can also kind of
fit within a thing.

Dan (57:27):
Sorry.

Ryan (57:27):
Ron, you go ahead.
Well, no, no, go ahead withyour thought Go ahead.

Dan (57:31):
So, antoine, I don't know if it's Antoine Lee or Antoine
Lai, but Antoine, I'll just callhim Antoine.
It's not like we're good mates.
So he's done stuff for LesIndes Modables and he's done

(57:54):
stuff for Eris, but as Iunderstand it, he essentially
set up his own company with hisown palette of materials that he
now does for all thesedifferent brands because, um you
, you saw right, sometimesthey're in-house and sometimes
they're working for like a bigfragrance house, like firminish

(58:15):
or whatever, and typically it'sone or the other.
They're either kind of in-houseor they work for firminish and
they're asked to do a job.
And what Antoine Lai did, as asort of a mold breaker, if you
like, is he set up his ownfragrance house with his own
palette of materials and stuff,and so he puts perfumes out
under his own name or he does itfor other brands, but he uses

(58:38):
his own palette of materialsrather than the Firminich brand
or the in-house materials of thecompany he's working for.
So he's quite interesting as asort of study in someone who's
doing it differently.

Ryan (58:53):
Well, two things really quick.
First, I don't know if yourealize this, but I feel like me
and Mike feel pretty incrediblyfucking stupid listening to you
say these crazy, crazy names.
So like eloquently easy.

Myke (59:07):
Yeah, I don't know if you've heard us attempt to say
some of these.

Ryan (59:11):
It's brutal and insulting yeah, I like our apologies on,
like mentioning perfumer namesis honestly a legit apology
because the worst.
I can't even pronounce thefirst guy, jackus or something
Jackass.

Myke (59:25):
I don't know, jack, what was it?
Cavalier or something?
Yeah, jacques, cavalier.

Ryan (59:32):
Yeah, jacques Lavagier, yeah, yeah.

Myke (59:35):
That's hard, that's perfect.

Dan (59:39):
Jacques Lavagier sounds like he works at the casino.

Ryan (59:45):
In another reality.
But the other question, I meanit may be just such a stupid
question, but I just thinkingabout you, talking about these
different perfumers, thinkingabout the fragrances where
they've had two and sometimeseven three perfumers work on a
fragrance.
I'm wondering how thatnecessarily works, just like an

(01:00:06):
overall, you know vibe checkbetween them, like oh yeah, or
is it like you know, no jack'sgoing to handle the bass notes,
you know?

Myke (01:00:14):
oh, it's probably some chain of command.
Right, it's got to be somebodydown here, and then they have
like immediate you supervisorand then the supervisor to the
supervisor yeah, I I don't know.

Dan (01:00:25):
I think it probably is, as you described, a sort of chain
of command thing.
I think also there's um,there's now this kind of um,
this better transparency.
So when you look at, uh, thecreed perfumes, uh, previously
they were all listed as erwincre, which is like absolute
fucking bullshit.

(01:00:45):
He couldn't make a perfume.
So now they list the perfumerbut they say it's this perfumer
and Irwin Creed.
And it's absolute bullshit.
It's just the perfumer.
Irwin Creed is essentiallygetting his producer's credit by
tagging his name on it.

(01:01:05):
I think that's probably aboutit.

Ryan (01:01:08):
He might have been in the room watching them mix it yeah,
eating like pistachios, hey,when are you going to be done
with that?
Yeah, he doesn't get any typeof credit for that.

Dan (01:01:20):
Smoking his cigar.

Myke (01:01:22):
Yeah, you get this fucking done.

Dan (01:01:28):
No, I don't think he was.
I think he famously just stoleit all and represented it as his
own work.
There's a, there's a bookcalled the ghost perfumer, I
think it's called, where theysort of explode this, this kind
of myth of the creed fragrancehouse, and I mean it's just.
There's so much bullshitteryinvolved yeah, I, I do.

Ryan (01:01:50):
I'm not gonna say this about creed, particularly
because we're too broke to fightoff lawsuits, but uh, I do feel
like, let them sue us.

Myke (01:01:59):
Where are they gonna get this microphone I?

Ryan (01:02:02):
do feel like there are these.
These brands will say like youknow, it's been here since the
queen the third and we've beendoing this and it's like I don't
know.
Like I can, I can see whererolex has been around.
We have like all this realproof and some of this stuff.
I'm like, but where's the proofthat they've been around for so
long?
You, you know.

Dan (01:02:22):
Yeah, I don't see it so.

Ryan (01:02:24):
I question it kind of immediately.

Dan (01:02:26):
So I mean certain brands can.
So I think the two brands thatspring to mind that could lay
claim to some sort of properlegacy like that would be
Hubigant.
So Fougere Royale was one ofthe original, the first Fougere

(01:02:48):
perfumes ever created.
Well, I think it was thearchetype, the original.
And Guerlain so like Jiki Iknow, has been around since I
think it was like 1907 orsomething saying like that, it's
been around since forever.
So so Golan and and, anddefinitely I would say real

(01:03:12):
heritage, but creed, fakeheritage, it's just you know,
it's just, it's not, it's nottrue.
Yeah, yeah, it's a story.
It's a marketing story and somuch of you know.
To bring it sort of full circleto what we're talking about
with roger dove earlier, so muchof this is just marketing hype.
You know it's marketing hoopla.

Ryan (01:03:33):
uh, sell a story um do you think some of these fragrances,
do you think they could havestood alone, without the
bullshit though?

Dan (01:03:45):
It's a great question and I honestly don't know.
I don't know.
I suspect, no, I suspect, youknow, the bullshit sort of got
them the foothold.
But then you know, creed hasbeen knocking out fragrances
certainly for a long time, forsure, I mean not since, like you

(01:04:08):
know, 16th century or anythingludicrous, but they certainly
been doing a long time and Ithink the market was less
crowded then.
So these days to launch a brandvery costly, very time
consuming.
I was talking to a guy the otherday who knows, uh, thibaut,

(01:04:32):
thibaut, crivelli, um, you knowamazing crivelli line, um he was
saying that the the plan, Ibelieve I I mean, don't quote me
on this but the plan was alwaysthat it was going to take five
years to reach profitabilitybecause it's just such a
competitive market out there andyou've got to scale and scale

(01:04:52):
and scale and scale and so toget to the top it takes a long
time.
So I think Creed probablyenjoyed being around at the
right time and maybe theirbullshit story helped and stuff,
but they certainly theycertainly occurred in a time
where it was less competitive.

Myke (01:05:12):
Gotcha.
Yeah, I mean, that iseverything, though.
It's like you know, if you makethe best whatever spaghetti in
town, if people don't know aboutit, then you're not going to be
profitable.
The people got to get you getout there and buy it, you know.
So yeah yeah, absolutely.

Dan (01:05:30):
But like I mean to almost any guy who's into fragrance
almost anyone yeah, eventus willhave been a significant sort of
milestone in their sort offragrance interest or enthusiasm
, and so I don't think you canknock a lot of the fragrance.
I mean, I know people like tohave a go at Creed for being a

(01:05:52):
load of bullshit artists andthere's truth to that, but some
of the perfumes are just fuckingbrilliant and Aventus just
changed everything for me.

Myke (01:06:02):
Insidious changed everything for me.
Well, there's a lot of ink onyour back there, of course.
Yeah, I gotta stand my gunshere and uh and and stay behind
it, but uh, but no, I mean,that's one that I preach the
gospel of all the time.
I feel like if anybody lovescreed of ventus, they've got to

(01:06:22):
try it, because, yeah, well, Iyou know, I've got to the, the
last drippy drops of the 100 milthat, uh, we got from you.
And then I went to doing mynormal layering with the eventus
and straight to heaven, and Iwas like after one day, I was
like I'm just not gonna wear thesame combo until I get some
more insidious.

(01:06:43):
It's just not the same.
Yeah, it's just there's a youguys, you guys do it better, man
, which?

Ryan (01:06:50):
is, which is why you're here today, dan for just pennies
a day I'm very grateful andyour, your uh royalties checks
will be immediately.

Dan (01:07:03):
Yeah, on a sort of related note, if you would like to do
some sort of giveaway on yourPatreon or whatever for a bottle
of the Madagascar, be more thanhappy to send that out to a
winner, if you pick a winner.

Myke (01:07:23):
I'll tell you what.
We'll pick a winner.
Right now, I think we send itto Stephen Doyle 100%.

Ryan (01:07:27):
He's over there in your neighborhood.

Myke (01:07:29):
Yeah, he's in the UK, oh really yes, and we're rarely
able to send stuff over that wayand he joins our live streams
all the time and we're alwayslike, hey, one of you guys can
win this bottle, unless you'reSteven.
Steven cannot win this bottle.

Dan (01:07:45):
Oh poor Steven that's not nice.
Oh, okay, well, I'll tell youwhat.
If you drop me Steven's details, I will fire him a bottle of
Madagascar.

Ryan (01:07:55):
That would be amazing.
Yeah, we'd love that man.
Thank you so much for doingthat.
He's going to be pleased withthat, I know him.

Myke (01:08:01):
Good yeah, we'll message him after this.
It'll be late, we'll wake himup, but, man, thanks again for
joining us and it's always ablast and you've really educated
us on this episode 100%.

Dan (01:08:15):
Well, thank you, I try to.
Please don't fact checkanything I've said.

Myke (01:08:22):
Believe me, our audience is not doing that.
They assume it's wrong.

Dan (01:08:30):
A very smart, a very smart.
Well, thank you for having me.
I I I've always enjoyed, uh,always enjoyed joining you guys
and uh, hopefully I willactually make it to Milan next
year and I won't have to justbitterly watch all the video
footage via Instagram.

Myke (01:08:46):
I'm going to, like you know, like three months out.
I'll be checking, dan.
We still good to go Two monthsout, one month out, two weeks
out, everything still good,absolutely Alright.

Dan (01:08:57):
Well, yeah, it'll happen.

Myke (01:09:00):
Well, thanks again, and, guys, thanks for joining us.
If you're a patron, who knows,you may get to see some of this
video, and until next time,spray it up, y'all.