Assorted Atomizers: HOOHAA Founders on Curated Area of interest Perfume Subscription Service

What is the curation process like, both in terms of the niche brands you work with and the monthly sets?

The process of deciding which perfumes make it into our curations is both a joy and a gauntlet. For us, there are many parameters as to how we define a fragrance as excellent. This goes far beyond the technicalities of a well-composed perfume. When testing a new scent on the skin, we are looking at the aromas used and how those move together throughout the course of the fragrance’s trajectory throughout the day, and if there are any gaps or places we feel the fragrance seems incomplete. We also pay a lot of attention to what happens in the drydown.

The experience that HOOHAA offers is entirely different from a customer experience in a department store. A lot of perfumes found in the beauty halls have what we like to call curb appeal. Because perfumes in department stores have such a limited window of time to capture a customer’s attention, they’re giving all of their best bits up straight away, which can sometimes lead to a disappointing wearing experience. However, because our customers get to experience scent differently, we like to do our best to make sure the perfumes found on HOOHAA deliver for them and how they will be experiencing them.

Seasonality is crucial, and one thing we take into account when curating the monthly subscription edits. Just through our own experience, we’re aware of what sort of fragrances people enjoy at different times of the year. However, we’re fortunate in that we offer three very distinct paths to hop in between. For instance, our Easy Does It customers received Maya Njie’s Les Fleurs in July, a fantastic laidback citrus floral white T-shirt scent, appropriate for any occasion. Our Take Me to Mars customers got 4160Tuesdays’ Maxed Out, which uses a whopping dose of cumin. Cumin can smell quite sweaty, which might not be for everyone during a heat wave; however, those customers subscribed to that edit specifically for that reason. They want a challenge!

To select a brand, we put them through our QCQ process. It stands for Quality, Culture, and Quantities.

Quality: Are these good perfumes? Do they feel complete, considered work? Do they make sense narratively? Do they evoke a response? Are they aesthetically pleasing and a joy to use? There’s a lot we consider because we want you to have a great experience overall!

Culture: The culture of the brands we work with is vital to us. We want to work with and support brands we feel are putting good out into the world, which goes beyond smelling good.

Quantities: Smaller, independent brands are doing some of the most adventurous work in perfumery. There’s also an element of sustainability tied to their work because of the small quantities they produce. Sustainability is important to us as it affects everyone.

Scent can be incredibly subjective. How do the single scents you choose each month offer broad appeal?

That’s a tough one to balance. The last thing we’d ever want to do is clip the claws from any of the edits out of fear they might not be congenial enough. However, we feel that the quality and craftsmanship that goes into the perfumes we’re curating elevates them to another space that transcends individual taste.

Since we launched, one of the most gratifying experiences is customers telling us how they would never have imagined wearing a particular type of perfume but taking to it after receiving their subscription. And these are the same sort of things we experienced in our personal fragrance explorations. Perfumes that we hated at first sniff have gone on to become favourites.

What is your advice for brands looking to stand out amongst the large stream of constantly launching products?

Start small. Debuting with an extensive collection can come off as a box-ticking exercise. We would never expect one brand to have a product to accommodate every type of fragrance, and it’s not something we would even want. Anyone thinking of launching a brand should also really do their homework and know what’s out there already. We smell so many things, and sometimes the only thought we have on them is, “Why does this exist?”

Since 2016 there have been almost 5,000 new perfumes launched every year. It’s an extremely oversaturated market, and instead of inspiring curiosity as we imagine these people launching brands hope it might, it’s causing customers to become fatigued. They don’t want to spend weeks sampling brands and looking for magic when they could be wearing perfumes they already know they love.

As researchers of the fragrance market, what do you think are the biggest misconceptions or surprises?

We feel there are a lot of misconceptions around ingredients used to make perfumes. Much of this is off the back of really unhelpful marketing copy—“finest quality ingredients,” which are almost always rooted in naturalism. A brand may very well be using an exquisite ingredient grown right in the heart of Grasse and picked at the crack of dawn while its petals are still laden with dew (cue: dramatic music). However, it’s a bit of a piss-take, for the perfumer is only actually using a drop of that and leaving out the fact the rest is put together with synthetically derived aroma molecules.

That’s not at all a dig on synthetics—quite the contrary. We would not be able to have perfume as we know it today without using synthetic aroma molecules. We feel that it’s a shame that they have been left out of the conversation surrounding perfume for over a century. It’s only now that we are beginning to see some of them creeping into notes lists, usually ambroxan, cashmeran, or Iso E Super. Perfume is not just a story built around beauty. Science is the other side of the story, and one people are becoming increasingly curious about.

What has the response been like?

The support we’ve had has been incredible—way beyond where we hoped for at this point. Not only are our customers loving the products that we’re helping them discover, but they’re getting our brand and personality. People seem to connect with our slightly irreverent but straightforward approach to helping people discover new, unique scents through subscription. The fact that we’ve got both is bloody brilliant, and it also means we’re resonating with the right people, and our concept is what people really want.

What is your customer demographic?

It’s a little early to be entirely certain about this, but we know for sure that 65% of our customers are women, between 21-50 years old. We have people from a broad range of industries, from creative agency owners to finance professionals, and biochemists, so the appeal seems to be pretty wide.

But most of our customers are looking for something different. It might be in how they dress, how they style their homes, what places they visit. Our customer is generally not looking to do what the masses are doing.