A trend or art enrichment
- Thread starter Al Shareef Oudh
- Start date
roflwaffle
True Ouddict
Exactly for a naturals heavy. I think for a full synthetic, or minimal naturals, the signatures are quite well understood. You have to unravel some natural formations like shiff bases and whatnot, but synth only and you could get 98% ish. The tech is there. Though clone houses can't/won't in general. Still, the market just isn't really there for micro niche markets like naturals heavy, so the economics are what keeps it at bay, and the clone drive to sub out for cost take it the rest of the way to make it less than interesting. It's clever smoke and mirrors at times, gotta give em that though
hutou
Oud Fanatic
Large-scale perfume companies have their own databases, a level of precision that most people can't achieve.
But OUD's biggest secret lies in its scent at high temperatures, because thermal decomposition makes it impossible to trace. I stumbled upon a method to optimize OUD's high-temperature fragrance, but I only use it for making incense sticks, so it's probably not easily imitated, haha.
Al Shareef Oudh
Master Perfumer
from my perspective it isnt so much the cloning itself perse, it's more the impact of cloning. We are in a time and place in history where youngsters are being encouraged to take the easy path out in life. That itself in our education system is an uphill struggle. The interest that an art has which encourages a beginner down it's path is short circuited when clones take mainstream. The challenge and journey to compose decent fragrances is being shaken out of the equation once the option of mixing alcohol with a concentrate is tabled. Basically the need to study and learn materials becomes redundant as the machine/company does it all AND there is a HOT market ready to buy it. That combination doesnt leave a lot of incentives outside of love for the art, for anyone to pursue it.
roflwaffle
True Ouddict
I really don't think it's as bleak as all that. We're in a golden age of indie perfumers as well. More indies than ever, more people being creative starting businesses and livliehoods than even 10 years ago, more interest, not less. Not making clones, to a receptive audience
We have more tools, more knowledge, more connections, more access to materials, more sharing of information and transparency than any time in perfumery history... Ever. Concentrating on the clone market alone is missing all the good completely, concentrating on one bad aspect.
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Al Shareef Oudh
Master Perfumer
Bleak? To Point out a issue affecting the scene doesn't make it all bleak. Nor can it's impact be ignored and just assume that everything is better than it historically was, when that is not true. The artistict input is much less today than it was say 30 years ago even if we have more information sharing and easier access etc.
We may be able to reach sources easier, however the artisan sources are drying up.
Hundreds of smaller artisanal distillers have closed down. There were producers that we dealt with for decades that now no longer produce because the market has shifted towards bigger companies wanting large scale crops and oils.
As for clones, that space also has impact across the industry, they are no longer small outlets run by one person and his camera, recently one such clone company bought roja. The impact of it is big and real.
It is important to have a full picture view rather than focusing just on positives or negatives. This community is fairly unique in that we have a lot of artisans and artisan lovers in the one space, however we are a very small space in much bigger pool. Just look at what basenotes has turned to, 10years ago there was a lot of what is discussed here also being discussed there.
holy-wood
True Ouddict
Such a good point and certainly (this whole topic, to me) is connected also to the rise of generative ai, which is also just cloning at its core. Not art, not intelligence but the image of it and image is very attractive to so many people, especially in beauty and frag industries, also especially online, where image is highly curated and capitalism is so accessible.
Capitalism combined with access to bypass (steal) artistry in order to produce products opens so many more doors for so many more people to feel like they have some level of “success” in their life without having to work for it really, without struggle. (For me) Concerning to say the least but also inspiring as an artist. For most ppl, theres a blurry line between art and imitation at the moment but i feel like as time passes the contrast between the two will just continue to grow (as more genuine art grows with access as well just on a smaller scale) and that will mean (maybe?) so much more genuine and authentic support for creators and artisans.
roflwaffle
True Ouddict
I certainly didn't say 'everything was better', that's a strawman. I was pointing out that your 'perfume is doomed now' was a stretch IMO as there's plenty of amazing things going on as well. Overall changed, but not dying.
Perfumers mostly don't rely on or even use gcms, nor AI for formulas. Yes many outsource perfumery work to Givudan, et al, but there's still a need for those perfumers to use their brains and come up with novel scents...
Clones are nothing new, there were knockoffs 40 years ago, longer. 'smells like' products in drug stores etc, never really 'one dude and a camera' in any real sense. Yes, they have grown in popularity, and many reasons for that.
Economic downturn and rising prices of goods, social media, combined with internet marketing and algorithms that have turned many/most hobbies into endless FOMO purchase cycles where people judge their hobby not on quality curation and taste, but on quantity and the next score. You see this same exact phenomenon on indie frag groups, with people's 'trade lists' being 100s of fragrances long, and the rise of decant trading and swaps rising to basically its own industry. It's adult pokemon now, gotta catch em all. 'limited releases', 'seasonal releases', and 'flankers' are wildly common, and feed on internet boredom and shopping compulsion, and not a clones issue. You see it across most hobby groups now, not just fragrances, it's a virus. Clones are just one manifestation of that, as most can't compulsively buy 100x $300 frags, so they get more endorphine rush from 100 meh scents than 5 quality ones. Shopping compulsion means they only have $40 to get their 'fix', and many are not able to be responsible and save for what they really desire. They're addicted to the unboxing, curating the perfect instagram 'display', chasing a new 'drop', not the scent itself. People are purchasing their feelings. Clones are a symptom not a cause.
It's a sad thing that corporate entities have consolidated, agree, that's just what conglomerates do, hardly the fault of clones. And the industry has moved less and less into 'artisan distillation' or even naturals as expressions and desire batch repeatability, and more and more into chemistry solves for a century now, nothing too new there, it's been on a slide for ages. Maybe some rose colored glasses as well, as not all of it was artisinal, fast run, rusty iron barrel still then comingled on export was exceedingly common as well, and one can still find no shortage of smaller distillers if needed. New ones continue to crop up, I've seen 2 new ones in the past month for obscure/uncommon things. Some of this fail cycle is just the sheer volume of the rise of etsy and high amount of junk sold as artisinal that drowns out any true artistry, everything now sold as unique, rare, artisan made, race to the bottom on pricing and choice overload to filter the wheat from the chaff. Hit from both sides.
Also nothing I said referred to this community at all, I actually didn't consider it at all since it's such a small detached oasis of perfumery as a whole, no offense.
I thought we were talking about the general industry, niche, indie, designer, clones, etc. English speaking, high end, veblen goods priced, oud focused, naturals only is a subset of a subset. Clones aren't coming for your market share. If anything, clones open up new generation/groups to getting into frags, and as they grow, tastes evolve, or rebel from the hamster wheel of FOMO purchases, provides a bigger pool of people to be interested in exploring into deep niche. It's not a one way street. Not many people go from Rolex's to fakes, and not many people getting into fakes can rationalize a rolex, but a surprising number of them at some point of buying fakes, become able to, and do buy a rolex as their 'grail' that wouldn't have been a real dream had they not gotten a taste for it with fakes.
Naturals and oud heavy scents may be in some mild decline in the West, as current mainstream frag tastes have shifted. Gourmand is the name of the game now, or 'fresh and fruity' and 'mass appeal' frags dominate at present. At best, superambers and heavy vanillin, throw in some bergamot, or some light aquatic. Also not a clones caused issue, just trends moving. It'll swing back the other way, or in a different way alltogether at some point. You could just as easily blame Angel's Share, Aventus, or Sauvage or whatever.
Personally, I blame any notion of the 'death of the perfumer' far more on companies shutting down their own perfumery wings and outsourcing it all to Givudan or IFF or whatever to develop the scent. Captives and just generally consolidating of the perfumist industry to being *the* central place where scents are made rather than per-house has arguably done more to limit perfumers careers than anything else. Though, indies have survived thanks to the aforementioned thriving indie scene and ease of reaching an audience.
Though, all is not bad, for all of the 'art is dead', this scene appears to be thriving. I saw a comment earlier from Nadeem about '35 new vendors onboarding' and 'going mainstream next year', so business is apparently good! And that's 35 non clone, artisianal vendors to come onboard. Like more than doubling this year alone! You'll have more competition from them than from clones.
Totally agree, one should not just focus on one negative as the blame all for changes to an industry, but consider all of the changes to that industry as a whole.
Thanks for the responses, it is interesting to see your thoughts here, even though we disagree. And I do respect that you've resisted the trend to use AI slop pics for product images, as that is its own special 'clone'/theft pitfall that has become too common
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Al Shareef Oudh
Master Perfumer
Thank you for taking the time to respond in detail, but unfortunately your points are going around what I am saying and you are missing my point.
I'll try to approach it a different way.
Say the starting point for the industry is the earth, from her grows all the plants. One path is that those plants are cared for, harvest well, processed with high quality standards and artistic input.
The second path is mass grown little input from an artist and processed by machines.
Which segment of the industry demands which path?
Second phase;
Artist who are material experts, examine and formulate high end compounds and accords based on specific requests by other artists down the line. They could be sitting at one of the big five (Givaudan, Firmenich, IFF, Symrise, Takasago) or at a artisan lab.
Or
Computer matched and generated automated compounds, accords and aromas. Again these could be in China, India, or at one of the big five.
Which segment of the industry demands which path?
Now let's talk about making the perfume:
There is an artist working for a commercial brand, or boutique brand, or uber niche brand, or indie artisan, which material path are they going to opt for.
Or
Workers who simply read from a formula sheet ad the contrate and some alcohol
Which path will they support and demand from?
The industry is not made of silos, there is horizontal impacts and both up and down stream impacts by each aspect of the industry.
Never in history have we had this size of support for no artistic input perfume as we do today. It is a 3-4billion dollar industry growing at close 16% going to 11 bill by 2030. It is big enough that the big 5 have developed within their business streams to supply ingredients to these manufacturers. At the other hand, artisan producers are closing even though we have 35 more vendors on Ouddict lol, but you forget the number that are out of work from the big players.
I hope that opens up the points. The industry is a big body and all parts have ripple effects.
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roflwaffle
True Ouddict
I'd say that the plants were more often than not, not 'well cared for' for as long as I can remember. Maybe in the 1980s, a few lone gardeners, Guelain with Samsara and others or other artisan things using specific naturals of high quality, but still using significant synthetics. And even then, it was relying on likely poached, or overharvested wood, just generally really bad for earth, and even if directly 'harvesting well', contributed to the demand of an overharvested crop that caused more poaching. It's a complex and nuanced thing as it were. Likely not your aim, but things are not so black and white there.
Prob need to go back to ... I dunno the 1920s to get a world class perfume of the time that was both a commercial hit and relied on the selection of naturals to showcase selection. Things have been problematic or not the two hypotheticals presented here in 50+ years for commercial perfumery. Indies/small producers sure, but I thought we were talking about the 90% of the market case?
In todays world, much like the last 50 years, they're going to opt for around 60-80% synthetics, with a spattering of naturals, and over the last 40 years+, increasingly not catered towards needing to making decision between 'artisinal patchouli' vs 'patchouli in general', and treating it as just 'patchouli, maybe a MD, maybe an absolute' but not 'my composition needs 2023 batch from this valley in Aceh to succeed'. An uber niche can tune that selection, if they're doing a one off and handing off reproducibility, but beyond that, reproducibility of batches beats 'better' in every contest for decades.
This is why assafi is not a great oud, but can get artisan price point, consistency is worth more to any perfumer who wants repeatability. Assafi bought today will be the same as their restock in a year, and even if a junk oud, worth the price to keep their formula alive to reblend.
Now, this is interesting. Even the niche dudes these days use compounding houses for production of concentrate. Designer, clones, Niche, Microniche, all have gravitated towards 'its far cheaper to send my formula to elsewhere to have some nameless 'worker' put X amount of Y in jug for me, so i dont have waste and they get better prices'. Minimums start at like.. 2kg of concentrate, maybe less, which is a minuscule batch of perfume for even a 'spare bedroom perfumer'. And yes, for niche, this often means 'well they have 90% of what i need, and when i get it I'll add 12.6g of my specific artisinal material, and 16.3g of this other really nice thing they dont stock'. But thats just necessity and fairly meaningless in the scheme of things. It's quite common, but the important thing is they still find value in quantities of scale for compounding as much as possible.
But, I'm not sure your angle here. Are you saying that for conventional synthetics based perfumes who actually measures from recipe into jug matters? For you, yes the method you use matters, for the industry as a whole, hasn't mattered in a century. Big generic compounders have cheaper prices, materials and labor, and far more accurate dosing, and Iso E is Iso E. No variation.
I'm not sure if you're talking about compounding houses, or clones or what here. I'd argue that 'flankers' are intellectually lazy, sure, but theres still artistic input all the same. Clones are similarly intellectually lazy obviously, but its a fairly industry wide thing. Even in micro niches, you'll see some 'inspired' ideas. Micro A makes a X, Y Z, B forward blend and you'll see other takes on that idea in pretty short order. Not GCMS'd, not going for clones, but seeing a set of notes that work well and sell well, and they'll attempt the same with their own flair on it. Thats just how humans work I guess.
And I think you're still missing that at 16% growth and 3xing by the end of the decade, you seem to be complaining that even your space will have 3x more money spent on it. That money isnt just going exclusively into clones, its the industry as a whole growing, some years one balance, another year others, but its wild opportunity and complaining about it instead of capitalizing on it is odd to me. If nobody's meeting a niche, more for you, and for underserved small areas, not uncommon for those areas to grow 10x, 100x as part of overall industry 3x trend
I'd love some stats/sources here. I'm pretty sure that companies have been offsourcing to the big 4 for formula development for years now, not something new, and also, not clone related.
I mean, I think we'd have to examine those one by one. Many have put their heads in the sand and refused to modernize and got left behind. Not always their fault, but resting on ones laurals and not keeping track of industry moves has led to a lot of issues. Others have retired out or made some massive failures in judgement, others have purely had just bad luck and had their milkshake drank. There's no onesize answer for why these places fail or close. Some were poorly conceived from their outset as many small businesses are. I've seen more than a few niche's where they just cant/wont keep up, and you send out enough orders 6-8 weeks after order placed and one shouldnt be surprised when your business loses traction. Reasons are myriad.
I think 'clones ate their lunch' wouldn't top the top 20, but i have no proof or evidence either way on that specific point. I'd also say current count of artisans +35 is greater than any period in ouddicts history, so if 5 fail and 35 new ones show up to take their place, is there a loss? How could one argue that artistry is dead with such figures? Even outside of this place, indie artists are popping up in massive numbers, and even professional perfumers are branching out to their own brands in large numbers. It's a sign of health even with the industry changing and corpos doing what corpos do, unlike many many industries these days seeing decline overall.
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Al Shareef Oudh
Master Perfumer
those figures i shared is for clones only, and I am not complaining I stating facts regarding how the volume of this segment has even got the big 5 catering to it, the overall perfume market is much bigger. by the end of the decade clones will reach 11bil. clones are growing at 16%.
i'd like to also clarify because you did mention a couple of times that the topic is about us, i raised this topic not because of the impact on our business, but more so where the industry is heading as a whole.
From my perspective there will always be those educated highly informed customers who seek out what we offer, and that is plenty of business for us. That still doesnt change the fact the change that is being caused by this movement of lack of value for the artist.
I am glad we are more or less on the same page. I do still disagree with the treatment of the plants thing, i know in our supply chain people really care about their crops, and even some of the bigger growers in Saudi arabia, turkey, India, Afghanistan, Morrocco etc they were really dedicated to their crops and art.
I think that is an interesting point. From my perspective if a painting artists gets AI to do a piece for him and he markets that as his work is very different to a perfumer using AI to sharpen the images of the final product or a video in place of person doing it for them on photoshop. One is using it as an editing tool whilst the painting artists is cheating in a way.
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Mr.P
oud<3er
regarding my comment about the visual arts and printmaking or digital imaging:
I had some very nice prints of Van Gogh paintings in my room as a child. On close inspection it was obvious that they were not originals, but from a distance they were enjoyable. I don't know how much injustice there was in the various businesses printing reproductions of art, but these cheaper roughly similar facsimiles are often more than enough and all than anybody with an ordinary lifestyle can hope to own. some kind of similar balance seems reasonable to expect, with a small percentage collecting authentic creations to use personally at their own discretion, and the vast majority doing their best to enjoy replicas and only enjoying the authentic items indirectly at exhibitions and things like that etc.. because of the way income is distributed of course the inexpensive stuff has to swamp the really fine stuff in the general market.
I'm sure for many it is the same thing with perfume and it's probably a good thing that there's mass market fragrance as well as fine art pieces so to speak, so everybody can find something they enjoy even if the industry is a bit wacky.
I guess it falls on the shoulders of the perfume makers to produce something that is so exquisite and of good value so that the replicas clearly fall short when compared side-by-side, at least by those discerning customers who have the knowledge and resources to select and afford authentic good quality art.
I don't mean this as a counterpoint to any specific statement that's been made, just sharing my thoughts on a very simple level about the situation in general sense.
I had some very nice prints of Van Gogh paintings in my room as a child. On close inspection it was obvious that they were not originals, but from a distance they were enjoyable. I don't know how much injustice there was in the various businesses printing reproductions of art, but these cheaper roughly similar facsimiles are often more than enough and all than anybody with an ordinary lifestyle can hope to own. some kind of similar balance seems reasonable to expect, with a small percentage collecting authentic creations to use personally at their own discretion, and the vast majority doing their best to enjoy replicas and only enjoying the authentic items indirectly at exhibitions and things like that etc.. because of the way income is distributed of course the inexpensive stuff has to swamp the really fine stuff in the general market.
I'm sure for many it is the same thing with perfume and it's probably a good thing that there's mass market fragrance as well as fine art pieces so to speak, so everybody can find something they enjoy even if the industry is a bit wacky.
I guess it falls on the shoulders of the perfume makers to produce something that is so exquisite and of good value so that the replicas clearly fall short when compared side-by-side, at least by those discerning customers who have the knowledge and resources to select and afford authentic good quality art.
I don't mean this as a counterpoint to any specific statement that's been made, just sharing my thoughts on a very simple level about the situation in general sense.
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Al Shareef Oudh
Master Perfumer
Seems like some of the big houses have had enough of being copied, and now they are taking some action through social media companies trying to ban certain comparisons with their creations 😂
