7 Common Traps in Niche Perfume Branding

Let's skip the preamble – this just needs saying. Niche perfumery has long outgrown the initial idea of “less marketing, more quality juice”, and with the number of perfume brands out there (and new ones still popping up like mushrooms), it doesn't make much sense to enter this market now… 

…unless you have a truly strong brand concept and the ambition to build a destination brand, not just another “artisanal passion project”.

Let’s dive straight into what’s going wrong with niche perfume branding today and what to avoid so you don’t come across as just another one of thousands. We won't even touch the obvious faux pas that have been largely discussed:

• trend-chasing (cherry, pistachio and other gourmands, generic ouds, skin scents and other minimalism, layering, limited editions, body mists, mythologized rare ingredients, childhood nostalgia, you name it), 

• over-promoting things that should be table stakes (thankfully, we are almost past the wave of brands that tried to make ethical business, gender neutrality and other social causes their core brand narrative), 

• using gimmicky names and pretentious copy to appear “bold and provocative”, and 

• launching dozens of influencer campaigns in one month. 

Let's leave those greedy brands aside and talk about what ELSE is wrong.

Problem #1. The concepts are too personal to be relatable. 

Many creators draw inspiration from deeply emotional experiences – moments, impressions, and feelings that leave a lasting imprint on their memory. Naturally, they want to share them with their audience. But here is the catch: describing a powerful moment as it was felt personally rarely translates into the same emotional impact for others. Most people won’t relate, and frankly, won’t care – because it's not their story, because they weren't there, because it's too random and taken out of context (or because the storyteller failed to recreate the context). There’s a fine line between a shareable experience that sparks curiosity and desire to step into that moment – and one that is relevant only to the person who lived it. Many small brands that are wholesome, genuine, and authentic at heart fail for this reason: they present a scattered collection of deeply personal, unrelatable (and therefore weak) ideas and inspirations, without shaping them into a coherent brand concept.

Problem #2. Brand founders are trying to squeeze all of their ideas into a single brand.

Many times, brand founders have not just one but several concepts or ideas in mind. It seems that they can’t pick the strongest one and end up trying to use them all within a single brand – when ideally, these should be developed as separate brands, since there's no logical, thematic, aesthetic, or olfactory connection between them. 

Ultimately, it becomes more a reflection of the creator than a compelling brand that feels like an integral whole. This is especially true in cases of olfactive disconnect within the line: when the founder is also the perfumer, the brand can end up feeling like a personal portfolio – a showcase of their palette across scent families and techniques that might be great for landing commissions from other brands, but not for building a focused, recognizable brand of their own. As a result, customers can’t pick up a clear DNA that sets specific expectations of a brand. Influencers struggle to interpret the brand in a way that inspires compelling reviews. Retailers don’t see the potential.

Problem #3. Brands shrink their identity to a very specific, narrow concept – instead of shaping it gradually across multiple touchpoints. 

It feels like in pursuit of originality, in order to cut through the clutter, many brands now create insular popup concepts that are very hard to scale into big brands later on. We are talking about “the inspiration behind our brand is underwater caves/fruit bruises/high school lockers/pixelated weather icons/farm tools” types of concepts. Although helpful to gain initial attention, these hyper-specific concepts may signal surface-level concepting and downplay what a brand is about. 

Sure, you can build a brand this way, but it’s not what it takes to build a strong brand. Not anymore. It might have worked 10-15-20 years ago, at the dawn of niche perfumery, but times have changed. You’ll still see brands like this popping up and getting quite a favorable reception, but add 3 or 4 more to the mix, and the outcomes will shift quickly. (And we don’t know how many more are already in the making, set to launch tomorrow.)

While a single thematic line isn’t inherently problematic, especially when it's a part of a broader scent portfolio, it may become an issue when a brand debuts with this as its sole identity.

The underlying issue is that building a brand through a multitude of carefully planned, deliberate touchpoints is a long and costly process, so many small brands retreat to bold concepting, thinking it's their only accessible means of differentiation. Meanwhile, this is exactly what makes the gap between professional and amateur visible – the execution.

Problem #4. The touchpoints…

The thing a lot of brands underestimate? The details. At a minimum, caring about them keeps the brand concept from feeling too on-the-nose (when the message is spelled out instead of letting the audience feel it). At best, it’s where your competitive edge might be hiding.

In a world drowning in brands, you can’t compete unless you're winning in a thousand random brand encounters that gradually build your brand’s magic and allure. It’s not just about your font, ribbon, sprayer quality, or how inventive you are in designing named blotters – those are the table stakes. It's about the effort you put into things you didn’t think you should care about – or didn’t think had anything to do with branding. It’s how precise and uncompromising you are about those things, but also how creative, obsessive, unhinged and sometimes overboard you are about them.

The way you organize your stand at an exhibition. The details of your outfit during interviews or when speaking on a panel. That random excessive detail that you hang on your bottles that’s like a thorn in the side and breaks the whole visual harmony… but sticks in memory. The lighting in your boutique. Your charming seasonal branding and the whole holiday game. The way your newsletter renders on different devices. The little text on the back of your sample cards. Your witty, poetic confirmation emails, or how you use any other opportunity to turn something transactional and mundane into an unexpected artistic encounter. You think people don’t notice, but once in a while, they do. And that’s when it clicks. And then collectively, they feel the sum.

Yes, it’s exhausting and an overstretch. It’s a thousand times more work than what’s sustainable. But that’s what it takes to compete for mindshare today. You have to do more to get less these days, the shortcut approach is not going to work anymore. If the author of this blog dies tomorrow, at least we said what we needed to say. 

Now, back to the practical stuff.

Problem #5. Beyond the finer points, there are plenty of high-impact ways to introduce and promote a brand with taste, subtlety and style that are affordable and still oddly underused.

Here are just a few:

• Using creative visual teasers and purposeless content. That long-forgotten art of a good teaser – the epitome of luxury that can afford saying something random, playful, silly – just because, with no purpose, no intent, no expectation that the viewer will convert.

Niche perfumery has gotten surprisingly boring and transactional. It kills the dream (or wraps the dream into a fast-food napkin). There’s almost no advertising without advertising, no spontaneous, charming email newsletters without a CTA, no Instagram feeds without repetitive studio product shots. It almost seems like brands believe that if they tell consumers “we exist and you should buy us” – they will.

• Using sonic branding and cinematic, emotionally charged video content. It’s so much easier to convey emotion through sound and video than through text. Videos are particularly immersive – they blend music, voice, imagery, and storytelling into something that, frankly, can move people more deeply than the perfume itself. They can do more for a brand than any piece of copy ever could.

Video speaks in layers. It can use voices that seduce, persuade or create intimacy. Or use music to add edge and emotional lift. Just think of the soundtracks to fashion runway shows and how they make you feel – or compare fragrance reviews to the comments on indie music tracks on SoundCloud, where the level of emotional engagement is on a whole different scale.  Video can imprint a feeling with colors, special effects, cinematographic techniques, an unexpected plot twist, or a moment of suspense. It can build emotional anchors that stay with people long after the screen goes black.

Yes, video can be expensive, but it doesn't have to be. Sometimes the most stripped-back, low-budget clips go viral because they strike the right chord. And sometimes really cool, extremely talented underground artists are willing to do collabs for free.

• Working with influencers in a way that actually enhances brand image. It’s honestly shocking how many niche perfume brands collaborate with influencers that don’t align with their brand voice, style, identity, or aesthetic – just because they have a high follower count. It’s also surprising how little interaction happens between brands and reviewers beforehand – interaction that could have made the reviews more interesting, personal, and filled with memorable details. Or how little creativity brands show when building relationships with influencers (almost as little as people use when dating these days). One more thing – yes, still shocking – is the number of micro-creators with small audiences but huge creative potential who get overlooked. Why not collaborate with them to write great copy or shoot unique photographs, instead of paying for professional work that’s often... not great?

Problem #6. The copy is bulky and overloaded.

The problem with many brands, especially ultra-niche ones, is that if you spend a few hours a week reading their copy, you can eventually grasp their concepts and the creators’ thinking behind them. But how many people have the time or interest to do that these days?

In the early days of niche perfumery, people were willing to dive into long-winded copy. Today, attention spans have collapsed. Yes, there’s a small countermovement, as the growth of Substack shows, but it is still a niche within a niche. The broader, sad reality is that you need to be a truly powerful brand with a strong, distinctive niche to make customers seek out what’s behind the brand and read its lengthy copy – and most new brands just aren’t there yet.

To add to this, the higher the buying power of a market, the less likely consumers are to bother researching a brand. And the further along they are in their perfume journey – with trained noses and exposure to hundreds of concepts – the harder it is to capture their attention. You’re lucky if they even smell your samples when the discovery set they paid for arrives – instead of forgetting it in a drawer until the samples evaporate or go bad. That’s only half a joke – in many cases, you really can’t hope for more.

What makes it a real problem is that these brands’ intricate sophisticated thinking doesn’t even remotely translate into what customers interact with daily – packaging, naming, graphics, Instagram, direct emails. Their concepts are inherently ill-suited to punchy, easily consumed short-form copy, names, or images. They are meant to remain lengthy and detailed, which requires proactive interest from consumers – making the effort to visit a website or read dense PR copy. Often, it also requires immersing oneself in the context and doing additional research to understand the references. Brands think it’s okay – they’ve created it for a small tribe of those who “get it.” But often, there is no tribe, not even a small one. And without powerful naming or visuals that spark instant emotion, these concepts fall flat.

Problem #7. The chicken or the egg problem.

What should come first – the concept that goes into a brief and guides the blending process, or the juice that drives the narrative? And to bring it closer to the topic of this article – which approach is more problematic?

They both are, but concept-first approach is a little bit more so – especially when the concept is very specific and the perfumer’s goal becomes matching it as closely as possible. This forced method often produces fragrances with weaker emotional resonance. On a subconscious level, people sense that these scents lack an authentic reason to exist.

When the juice drives the concept – as is often the case with artisanal brands where the owner is also the perfumer, it can be difficult to maintain coherence across the line. This can make the collection feel disjointed, as if the fragrances lack a common thread or unifying spirit. So, while olfactively the result may be stronger, the branding side tends to suffer. 

What works best is when things are done in parallel. Several scents are developed within the directives of a brand’s DNA – as playful experimentation with no fixed goal in mind, yet guided by a few unifying constraints. Simultaneously, multiple fragrance concepts are crafted in line with the brand’s identity. The most compelling scents are then paired with a matching concept from this pool.

—————

These are the main issues and challenges we’ve noticed across hundreds of recent launches. None of them will absolutely doom a brand if the fragrances are good, but they won’t help it grow either, leaving all the pressure on the juice itself.