 Hi and welcome to School Puzzle, I'm your host Sarah and this is the show where we chat with everyday entrepreneurs about everything that goes into starting a new venture. The fragrance market is a $7 billion industry that is expected to keep on growing. And J.J. Vittoria, the founder of Ulfactory, has shaken up an industry that has been around for centuries. Ulfactory is a modern fine fragrance brand that allows people to create custom fragrances with scents that are created by the world's top perfumers using the highest quality natural and sustainable ingredients found in the finest luxury products at a fraction of the cost. J.J. Welcome to the show. Hi. Welcome to the studio. I'm so happy to be here. I've been here a few times and when I say a few times I mean way too many times because I love your brand. I've actually made my own perfume here. The cool thing about Ulfactory for me is everything is customizable. Could you tell us a little bit about it? Yeah. So actually the custom part was not in the original plan. So originally what we wanted to do here was I wanted to make a brand that was like had so a lot of the elements you see in fashion these days affordable but luxury products. Yeah. So we wanted to make these really high quality, beautiful fragrances, world's top perfumers but we wanted to be able to make it more accessible, fun, interactive as opposed to the kind of darker, little more exclusive environments you can get in some of these other brands. So because we were bottling everything on site what that allowed us to do is create this sort of custom experience that kind of came afterwards. The original idea was just to be like affordable but extremely high quality fragrance. Okay. Tell me a little bit about your background because in researching you I learned that you really, you don't have what I expected as a background but in like a really cool way. You have a financial background and then you started olfactory. Yeah. Why? I mean, you know, it's one of those things, right? So I grew up interested in fragrance, in the art of fragrance but you know, I didn't see it as like a business opportunity. I was interested in the art side of things. I had some family and friends in the business. I think going into sort of the financial business after I graduated college I sort of learned about what it would take to start a business. I think some of that sort of understanding gave me the confidence but also the analysis aspect of what it would take to make it work, you know, to make something like this which is a new sort of idea and actually make it a business that could actually, you know, exist. Yeah. I don't know of anything else like this in New York. I remember like I went on a trip when I was 15 to Italy and they had a perfumery there and I made my own fragrance and I thought it was the coolest thing. So when I learned that you guys were here I immediately came in the store because I think part of the way you can create a successful business is by doing something that others aren't doing and that's something you're doing. So what was the first step? You said you kind of experimented yourself and then when did you say, okay, I'm actually going to do this and what was the first thing you did? Yeah. Not one of those like, you know, a few people, it was definitely wasn't like that. So as I said, I was working full time and on the side I was kind of, as I say, playing around things, also starting to formulate the ideas of what a business that would look like, understanding what other businesses in the industry look like and then just really being driven by the idea of having just really great fragrance and that's kind of the basis here. It was always the idea, as I said, about the, you know, having affordable but high quality. The idea was just to focus on fragrance. A lot of these retailers have, they have these super ornate and fancy bottles, the sort of like antique extravagant environments where we wanted to step away from that and get back to what's in the bottle itself and that actually speaks to the name Olfactory NYC was kind of the whole idea about Olfactory was to get back to your olfactory senses. Like, what is your, what are you actually smelling? Tell me about the process of starting this. Okay. So you have the idea, you have the concept. Did you start an online store first or did you start the in-person store first? Did you do them both together? We knew we had to have a physical presence as well as an online present. But the problem with physical retail today obviously is, you know, it's a cost. It's something that people have to, you know, no one wants to hear about you starting a brand that's breaking more to these days. They want you to be online. With fragrance, it's one of those products where you kind of need that physical presence somewhere, especially we don't have like a celebrity behind it or some sort of, we don't have a big brand behind it. So the idea with this unknown brand was we had to have a sort of a physical presence, but we also wanted to supplement that with an online business as well. Tell me, how did you market it then, right? So you don't have celebrity endorsement, but you have a really great idea. So how did you get people into the store? We didn't have like all the funding in the world. Yeah. And so what we had to do is we had to sort of do a lot of Instagram influencers and that kind of thing, marketing sort of in that way. What we tried to do was we tried to leverage the experience aspect of it because we're making a custom scent and it's a process. You come to the studio, you create your scent. It's, you know, you choose a scent, you choose the name and all that. It's all kind of a sort of, it's the whole process. While the scent itself doesn't lend itself to a visual medium, the process does. You can video it, you can show the process and that kind of thing. And so we wanted to kind of leverage that aspect in the marketing of it. Yeah, that part's really cool, by the way. So you come in, you smell everything and then you can add your own individual scents to the bottle and then you can customize your bottle. So you can choose the color, you can even name it. Yeah, we've got one right here, so I don't know if you can see it. Nicole. This isn't Nicole. Yeah. This is not yours, but I don't. No, mine, I wore mine today though. Oh, there we go. Yeah, in the spirit of this interview. On that side of the room is where you start, so step one, picking one of your core scents as you did. And then on this side behind me is our sort of custom bar, where you then build off one of the original scents. I have a perfume that I bought in Dubai that I love, but I don't know where to get it. So is it possible for someone to come in here and like bring a perfume they love and say, how can you guys make this? We get a lot of that, as you might expect. A lot of people who want to recreate a scent, legally we can never recreate a scent exactly. Oh, interesting. Well, formulas are trade secrets. So even if we did know them, which we wouldn't, but we can always take you in that direction. So what ends up happening is that's actually sometimes useful because if you come in and you've got something that's super woody and rich and earthy, we can then show you different things. We know immediately that's the kind of direction you want to go and we can show you in that in that way. Oh, that's so cool. Earlier, you briefly referenced funding. Funding in New York for a storefront, not the cheapest thing on earth. So how did you do it? Right, I mean, originally it was a lot of just reaching out to friends and family. As I said, I knew some people in the industry, so that helped. I was able to sort of formulate this idea that was a little bit different. And I was also able to, even though it is a storefront, luckily, and this is for other entrepreneurs out there, there's two sides of every coin with these things. So while storefronts, everyone says, you know, you don't want to start with a brick and mortar, because of that, it means that there's prices have come down a little bit, especially now. So, you know, in COVID times, like you can get good deals. So even so, you know, you're not getting the traffic. So there's it's a push and pull. We knew we had to have it because of fragrance. Not we wanted to be able to have that interaction because of the custom process that came after. But we were able to just figure out ways that were the most cost effective in that way. And yeah, it's sort of because it wasn't there wasn't a ton of funding for a brand that wasn't just purely online. It was more of it was more of just trying to get as get revenue as soon as possible, get the word out there and be able to get to the point where you don't need the funding. You can sustain yourself. So did you use your savings? Did you take out a loan? Did you get investors? Which route did you go? All of the above. So yeah, I had some own savings, but also, yeah, investors, friends and family, investors and really just getting up to the point where we were breaking even as soon as possible, which was after the first year and a half, we were sort of there. So it was kind of like at that point, it was easier to convince some other people to come in and not have to be not on that sort of heavy cash burn that you can get to. So in terms of I definitely, you know, the quicker you can get to that point, I think it's just just takes a whole load off your back because you're not like losing money all the time. And that was the idea with us. Do you have any advice for someone that's doing this that would help them get to that break even point faster? Yeah, I mean, well, figure out where you can make money, where you can, where your best margins are and really just go for that. You know, you have to, obviously, you want to get your product out there as much as possible as well. But for us, it was like we sort of scaled up marketing as we were able to with the money. We had, obviously, I think advice would be raise as much money as you can, if you can, you can get access to it. If you can get access to it, for sure. But that was, that was the idea. For me, it also just approves yourself that you can do it. Yeah, I think there's something a bit, you know, it's a bit demoralizing. I think if, well, I mean, for some people, I think I don't have the confidence, I think to have a business that was, that would be just losing like more, more, more, I mean, that's just me. I'm also you have a financial background. So I think for you, the numbers, which the numbers should be important for anyone, but for you, the numbers are so important because of that background you have. Yeah, and so what we tried to do, you know, as I say, the whole idea being affordable luxury fragrance, like how do you make, how do you do that? We had to just look for savings where we could, we weren't gonna save on the fragrance itself. As I said, we wanted to put everything into the fragrance, but the packaging and all that, we had to get kind of innovative on how we used our packaging, how we were able to avoid these high minimums that you get with suppliers. So all of your perfumes, they're unisex. Why did you decide to do it like that? Yeah, I mean, that's, that's really been a trend in the industry towards not branding things so much as female and male. It's sort of unavoidable a little bit because of the colors. Right, but you know, you run out of colors if you don't choose different colors for the bottles. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the thing is too, is that also it all feeds back into the idea of it being less about the packaging and the marketing. The fact of the matter is the perfumers don't create fragrances for men or for women. That's kind of done once they send it to the marketing department of the brand that they're working for. And then they stick it in black packaging and call it a men's fragrance. And typically that ends up being woody scents, but you could take anything and put it in the darker packaging, call it that poor um, or whatever, or you know, or you know, and it becomes a female or male scent. You know, we wanted to get it, again, we wanted to get away from all of that stuff. And you know, this is more about what do you love to smell? And frankly, unisex fragrances, once they're on a man or once they're on a woman, these great fragrances, they change on your skin. They do. Yeah, they change with the wearer. And so you'll have the same scent that's worn by, you know, a husband and a wife and it smells different. It's a different scent on each one. You said that like we both could be wearing the same fragrance. It smells different on both of us. Why? So that's to do with hormones, the oils of your skin, which mix with the scent. You know, as I say, some of the best fragrances, how they work is because they mix with your body oils. If like, if they're not good, they'll just be sitting there on top of your skin. But the best ones we'll just, we'll mix in well and the way they project is by mixing with your body oils as well. And so that's why certain things will smell different on a man and a woman. I should also, you know, we do have a lot of couples that come in and create a scent for each other, but it is super interesting. Oh, that's a cute, that's a cute date idea. It's a great date idea, but it's funny like, it's funny because the scent is so associated. And so like how your memories end up being how you interpret these scents. And so for a guy, it'll be the same scent like a jasmine will remind them of a bush in their grandma's backyard. But then the woman, it'll be like, it'll remind them of like an ex-boyfriend. And so they have completely different ways they interpret that scent. And it's just, and then you learn a lot about each other the way you have, you know, so it's a fun experience for couples or friends, because you learn more things about each other as well as creating a scent. That's so true that a scent can bring back memories. Some of my favorite scents, and my least favorite scents bring back specific memories. You mentioned like an old boyfriend. Acquadigio, that one? No, not gonna happen ever again. That's a very popular scent, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, my husband tried to wear that and I'm like, absolutely not. I cannot wear that, it's been ruined. So you guys have one location here in Nolita. This is your flagship store. Are you thinking of expanding to other stores at a certain point? Kind of what's your growth strategy with this brand? Yeah, so I mean, you know, obviously COVID has thrown a lot of things up here. We definitely were before this, thinking of opening another, we were looking into another location in New York City. The idea though is this is more like, I think a bit more of like a studio where we're sort of, you know, cause a lot of the days when there's not customers in here, we're playing around with different things, we're making different things. And so I saw this, it's kind of like a base camp for that sort of, for that sort of, for playing around. So we definitely want to bring the experience to other cities, you know, with the online experience that we've now built out, like you can do the custom experience online. How do you do that? Yeah, sure. So yeah, so because this is a sort of, the send creation side is a two step process. You start by picking one of the core sends and then you try different versions of your favorite core send. Yeah. We replicate that online with two different sample boxes. So this little box here, this is part of your online experience. Yeah, so. This is new? Yeah, it's sort of new. We just weren't really, when we had a studio and we were kind of a new brand, it was people coming in and creating the send and then online was really more, once you've made your custom send, we save the blend on file and then you can always come back. You can either come back and recreate it or you can just reorder it online. If the blend is saved online with your profile and you can just reorder your send online. So that was more, the online was more for the reordering side of things. And then, you know, when COVID started. Don't worry, every business owner has the same story. It's a big sigh right now. I know, you're like. We sort of started trying to figure out how can we recreate this process online? And because it's a two set process, it sort of lended itself a little bit to that. So you start with this box, which has our original core sense, all the core sense you see behind you in this box. And then once you've found your favorite from those, it comes with a credit. So this box is $18. But it comes with an $18 credit to the next step, which is where you pick your favorite. So let's say you like the Blake. You would then get a box that is just versions of the Blake. So you would send you another box called the Tinkera box, which is just versions of the Blake. And then you can try those. And then your favorite of those comes with another credit towards the full size, which would have your... Wait, that's brilliant. I didn't know you did it like that. I thought you had to buy this box and then you had to buy the full price perfume. So they all adds up to... It all adds up to the same price. And you get all these extra samples that maybe you want to play around with. So smart. Wow, way to find a solution in a difficult scenario. It's a slower process, right? Because you've got to get the bomb box, then you've got to try it. So it's not just coming into the store and having it walking out with a fragrance half an hour later. But it is a way to do it at home and you get to play around. And it's COVID safe, which is the whole goal. So how are you marketing this? Yeah, so similar to how we marketed the original experience through working with influencers online. We've done more sort of a little more of the TikTok ads. Is that working? TikTok is so new. I just got on it. I'm curious to your experience. TikTok is really good for, I think engagement and activation. I think TikTok is a great tool because it sort of really concentrates on the experience. Because of the video nature, I think people are just more engaging. YouTube is similar too. So YouTube, because you can show the process and you can show the trying on and it gives a little more personality to it, I think it's definitely better than Instagram in that respect. So for marketing purposes, you found video content is best for this because it is such an experience. So fragrance also because I spoke earlier about how our whole brand, the whole idea was to focus on the fragrance and not on the packaging. Right, and Instagram's like all about visual. So suddenly we have these nice colors but for Instagram, we're always like, oh gosh, it's just like a bottle. It's not like how much can you say. So with the videos and stories, but also on YouTube and TikTok, you can really play out that experience with the playing around with these whether it's this or whether it's coming into the store and playing around with the different sense here. It kind of lends itself to the video process. It really shows the power of storytelling, I think. I mean, in terms of like the storytelling, it's also a story of creation and it's a story of education. So people are not just, you don't just see them taking you through something. You see them as they go from someone who like, didn't really know about fragrance or didn't really know what they liked. Maybe he was skeptical of the experience because they just weren't into fragrance necessarily. And then they were into fragrance and then they come here. Like when I came here with my videographer, he didn't think he was into fragrance and then he realized he is. That's great, see? And that's the power of it. You're converting, yeah, you're converting, yeah, yeah. So that's what you said about the market for fragrance. This is the idea of this brand is not just getting people who love fragrance but it's expanding to people who don't necessarily, who don't know yet. And as you look at the US specifically, is a pretty fragrance-dry market in the sense that people here, there are just like a lot of people, there are a lot of people who don't really wear fragrance here except for maybe a special occasion and when they do, they have one signature scent. That's true. Right. And so like, but in Europe and especially in the Middle East, you have a fragrance wardrobe, which is like, you know, same way you have different dresses and clothes or in your wardrobe, you have a fragrance wardrobe which for different seasons, different times of day, you wear different fragrance. And so, you know, this is what, and so the idea here is to sort of just open fragrance up a little bit because I think the reason why it is that way right now in the US is because it's just so expensive to get great fragrances. It is, it is. Another thing I've noticed is there's hotels now that are starting to have their own scents at the entrance so that you get this five scents experience, five scents, oh, experience. Have you ever considered going into that and like selling to not just individual consumers with businesses? Yeah, so we've started to do more of like smaller residences and businesses where they wanna have a scent to fill their WeWork space or something like that where we can kind of create something. They start by creating something here and then we can translate it into a diffuser or whatever depending on the space in the business. And as you say, a lot of people are more interested in that these days. We've done workout studios like Box and Flow nearby. One of our last guests. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah, there we made the scent for their studio. We've done some smaller business like that creating a scent for them. And that's something that I think is an industry, a sort of a business that we would love to get more into. Yeah, it's expanding it to new categories. So what is next for olfactory? So, you know, that's part of it. I think it's creating sense for businesses figuring out how to translate this into more sort of like doing this in other places. So in other businesses like you could take this into another business that just sells fragrances and make custom versions in that space. So we're sort of expanding the physical ideas. Well, we're also trying to build this online experience. Well, I think the online experience is brilliant. We've talked so much about olfactory today. I'd love for you to share some advice to aspiring entrepreneurs. Sure, you know, it depends on what you're doing. I think a little bit we spoke a little earlier about if you can raise as much money as you raise more money than you need. People say this all the time, but I think that's really important. If you can get more money than you need, there's always going to be... You can have the best spreadsheet in the world, but there's going to be overruns and there's going to be things you don't expect, or there's going to be new opportunities that you want to explore and you want to do it like fast. So you don't, if you can get more money than you need to start up, that's always great. I would also say just as a general thing, don't let a no stop you, one no stop you from doing something and don't let one yes convince you of doing something. Even the most trusted advisor, someone who has all the experience in an area and all the things, and then you really trust them with everything to do with what you're trying to do, they don't know all the things that you know as well. And so you want to take, if you get five no's on something from your experience, then yeah, probably don't do it. Probably don't. You really think it, but don't let one thing discourage you and don't let one yes, one no discourage you and don't let one yes convince you as well. So do some market research before being committed to an idea. Yeah, or just crowdsource your advice, I'd say, rather than just having, letting one person, because people, advice is free. That's fantastic advice. Speaking of someone that advice is free. I appreciate that. It's been wonderful having you on the show JJ and thank you for joining us. Thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you want to learn more about olfactory, visit olfactorynyc.com or follow them on Instagram at olfactorynyc. And that is all for this episode of School of Hustle. Keep up with all of our episodes on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you can stream or download podcasts. 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