December 12, (THEWILL) – Olufemi Olaseinde Olusola speaks on his passion for perfumes, his business, Seinde Signature and the paid studio experience he offers his clients at his ‘perfume museum,’ in this interview with IVORY UKONU. Excerpts:
Although your line of business is a popular one, it is peculiar in terms of the kind of perfumes you stock and the services you render alongside it. How did you come about this?
I saw the market for it and decided to explore it. I didn’t set out to sell perfumes. It started as a hobby. Somewhere along the line during the COVID-19 period when I had nothing to do, I began posting things on my social media platform, including my perfume collection. Perfume enthusiasts began to send me messages. Some wanted to know what some of the perfumes smelt like. Others wanted to know where they could get them to buy.
Some wanted to come to my residence to see my collection and quite a handful succeeded in trooping to my residence to see them. I had to stop people from coming to my house at some point, got an office and created a paid experience for people, who were interested. They came in, savoured the scent of the perfumes in the collection, learnt about their history and the ingredients used in making them, which are mostly natural, decided what they wanted to pick up and then we got it for them.
I call it the Seinde Studio Experience or the perfume museum where you are made to feel at home as you navigate through different collections. If you had asked me at the beginning if I sold perfume when I started out, I would have said no.
Isn’t that what you do?
I give you an experience. Besides, what I do is borne out of passion unlike a lot of people in this line of business. They are only in it for the money, which is why they all sell the same thing. They may be designer perfumes, but they are mass produced. For some of us that are deep into perfumes, our needs can’t be satisfied because they can’t provide what we need. In the process of opening the perfume museum or experience studio, some of the manufacturers of the perfumes became interested in working with us by bringing their products to the country. We then found ourselves in the middle of the manufacturer and the end user, hence it became a business.
When you say you are deep into perfume, I guess that makes you and addict
I won’t call it an addiction. What you are addicted to can take over and kill you if you are not careful. Being deep into perfumes can’t do that. It’s just a readjustment of priorities. I am a grandfather of two and will be clocking 60 next year, but I don’t like or do some of the things my contemporaries do with money. I don’t spray money at parties and I don’t smoke etc. That is what they like to do and spend money satisfying that craving. I like perfumes and so I spend my money acquiring them. That is what makes me happy. The way you eat different kinds of food, instead of being stuck with one kind of food is the same way I stock up different kinds of perfumes. Those who stick to one, two or three kinds of perfumes, only do so in order to smell good. What I have for perfume is a lifestyle. I feel naked when I don’t wear perfume. Some people do not know that the sense of smell is the most important of all our senses, it is very powerful. I used to travel out only to buy perfumes. That is how passionate I am about perfumes. Let me shock you even further: I will buy perfume before I eat. If there is a perfume of N1million, I will buy it. But if you bring me a shirt or a pair of shoes and tell me the shirt costs N 200,000, I won’t buy it because it is too expensive. My attention is on perfumes. That’s what is important to me. Life is about value, not cost. It is whatever you place value on that you put your money on. So, I place a lot of value on perfumes and that’s where I will rather spend my money.
How large is your personal collection?
About 1,300 perfume bottles. I have a whole room filled with perfumes.
How are you able to use all of them? Do you spray a cocktail of them at once?
No, one at a time. I may use one today and not use it again for a year because of the number of bottles in my possession. I am not talking small millilitres. The quest for a new scent drives this passion.
What is the oldest perfume in your collection?
The one I would have called the oldest perfume in my collection was the one I wore on my wedding day, which was in June 1990. I liked it so much that when it finished, I bought another one. I had it for five years before it finished. You may think I am careful about spraying perfumes, which is why it lasted that long, but I create a bubble with my perfumes such that if you hug me, the scent will linger on you for the whole day.
Shouldn’t there be a particular way to spray perfumes, instead of creating bubbles?
Perfumes are actually meant for the skin, not fabrics. As for me, after taking my bath, I use a moisturizer, if I want, because it makes the perfume to last longer. If you apply body cream before spraying the perfume on your body, the perfume stays longer on you, even till the next day. The perfume stays on the cream and doesn’t penetrate into your body. After dressing up, I will spray it some more. So yes there are certain points where you spray perfume on your body: Your pulse points, behind your ears, your inner elbows, behind your knees. You can spray perfume anywhere, but those places make the perfume to settle down well.
What is the difference between what you sell and what others sell?
There are lots of high-quality perfumes, the majority of which do not get into the country. Most perfumes people know like Gucci, Christian Dior, etc, are called mainstream perfumes because they are mass produced by multinationals so that they can be distributed worldwide, easily, anywhere, at airports, shops, etc. What I sell are called niche perfumes. They are produced by smaller companies and they go round the world to source for materials to produce them. These materials are mostly organic materials. These ones are high-quality perfumes and they don’t come cheap. With these kinds of perfumes, you see the transmission from first note to base note. The perfumes I sell are exclusive and can’t be found in any store in Nigeria. Some of the stores you see stocking the perfumes we sell are those we collaborate with, who must have gone through the necessary training required to sell them.
What does first, middle or base note mean?
When you spray perfume, the scent that comes out, which is the first note, is different from when it gets to the middle base and when it finally settles on your skin, which is the final smell or base level. By then it’s reacting with your skin chemistry and body temperature. That’s the level that lasts longer on your body. So when you buy perfume and just spray it without even allowing it to get to the medium or base level, you might just be buying the wrong thing because you didn’t allow it to settle in, which could take a few minutes and or an hour. Some perfumes are good at the top, but not good in the middle or the base, while some will not be good at the top but very good at the base. A lot of people don’t know this, which is why most people in Nigeria buy perfumes based on recommendation. This is where the experience studio comes in. It is where you can actually come and see how a perfume works and then make a decision to either buy at the end of the studio experience or return after being fully convinced.
And for those who buy perfumes and can’t tell the difference between eau de toilette or eau de parfum?
It is simply the level of the concentration of the perfume oil inside it. The higher the perfume oil, the longer the smell lasts. The lowest one is the body mist with probably two or five per cent perfume oil in them. This is followed by cologne, then eau de toilet (EDT). This has maybe 11 per cent perfume oil. This is followed by eau de parfum (EDP), which has a higher percentage. And there is the pure perfume, which has a higher quantity of perfume oil. But the highest you will ever get will probably be one with a 25 per cent concentration of perfume oil, which is quite high. In most cases, regulators do not allow up to that percentage in perfumes. Then we have the pure oil perfume. Those ones are quite expensive, not the type they sell in Nigeria that is everywhere.
What is the most expensive perfume in your studio?
Our most expensive perfume is N700, 000. Depending on the type of material that is used for the perfume, it can go as high as N1 million. They smell different and their performance is top notch. They are not the type that you have to spray a second time to smell nice. Once you use it, it stays on you for a long time without having to spray it at intervals. However not all the perfumes I sell are that expensive, but all my perfumes are exclusive to me.
What exactly does it cost to have the Seinde Studio Experience?
N50,000 for four hours. What I have in the studio is my personal collection. It comes with canapé and a glass of champagne. We just want you to feel the luxurious experience. It’s like somebody inviting you for dinner, but instead decided to take you to a Seinde Studio Experience and you are eating something and smelling nice things. That is another experience on its own. Perfume connects you to your history. You smell some perfumes and it brings back memories. So, when you come for the luxurious experience you never ever forget. We have a beautiful testing table devoted to discovery. At the end, you get a certificate that you have smelled niche fragrances with us.
Are Nigerians aware of these luxury perfumes?
Trust me, they are aware. Each time we host an event, we see the way people react to it. A research study recently revealed that Nigeria has 43,000 millionaires in dollars. The luxury market in Nigeria is massive and it is worth trillions. I can tell you that there are more Mercedes Benz G-Wagon SUVs on Nigerian roads than on the streets of London. That may not be a yardstick for measuring luxury or wealth as there are some wealthy people in Nigeria, who do not own luxury cars.
Trust me, Nigerians, who are aware of my luxury perfumes are more than willing to part with large sums of money to acquire them. Nigerians have money, but it’s just about where they put their attention on and what they know, because you can’t go beyond what you know. If you don’t know that these kinds of perfumes exist, you can’t have them. For example, if you don’t know that there is a car called Rolls Royce, you are not going to buy it. If the best car in your mind is a Peugeot 404, then that’s what you are going to buy because that’s what you are thinking of, even if you have the money for Rolls Royce.
It’s about what you know, not what you have. If you don’t place a value on anything, you won’t put your money on it. You have to expand your world to know what is going on. Nigerians have limited knowledge and they are too lazy mentally. Everything is about what somebody else is doing or what they think they know without actually thinking. But when you expand your horizon and see what you can do, then you find out that you are actually not limited by anything.
Something must have triggered your love for perfumes. What was that?
My father. He liked to smell good. When I was growing up, the whole house had to smell of something really good, whether air freshener or incense. So, I grew up smelling different nice things. When I left school in 1979 and my classmate, who traveled to America for his university education, returned, he brought me a bottle of perfume. That was my first bottle. I bought another type of that perfume, which I have in my studio. Each time I wear it, I get great compliments from people. To every perfume, there is a history.
Speaking of history, since what you have is called a perfume museum, what are some of the historical perfumes you have in it?
There is the perfume that the late Princess Diana wore on her wedding day. There is also the first Calvin Klein bottle of perfume produced. We have a bottle of a very particular limited-edition perfume. Only 200 bottles of that perfume were made worldwide and a bottle comes with a certificate of ownership. There is a perfume called ‘Osun,’ named after a Yoruba god from southwestern Nigeria. This perfume was made in Romania. All the manufacturers tried to do was make art, not just create a distinct scent. Seeing that ‘Osun’ is the god of fertility and love, they tried to create something that depicts that.
I have another perfume called ‘Esu’, which is made in Thailand. The manufacturers called it a popular Yoruba god. The character of the devil is very tricky, so they made the perfume with that feature. The reason why they call it ‘Esu’ is because anytime you wear it, the scent changes. These are outsiders looking at our culture to create something different. I also stock a brand by a Nigerian perfumer, Catherine Omai. Nigerian retailers refused to partner with her but today, her perfume, Contagious, is much sought after in Europe and it doesn’t come cheap. The perfume is designed with aso oke giving off a rich African culture. I also have perfumes that are made from different materials like poo, sperm, whale puke, etc.
What challenges have you had so far and how did you overcome them?
Challenges are what makes the world go round. However, there were some initial challenges with shipping goods into the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which created unforeseeable time delays. But we are working around it.
What would you say has been your greatest achievement since you started this business?
The fact that manufacturers of the perfume I stock now recognise Nigeria as a place to be and not where people are often kidnapped or where things are so bad. I know these things are happening, but it’s not as bad as the way people abroad assume it to be. They were here during our first anniversary and their experiences, I must say, has given Nigeria’s image a big boost.. The kind of hype they gave Nigeria when they returned home was massive. That to me is a great achievement.
The business is only about a year and some months old. What are your projections for Seinde Signature in two or five years?
Five years is too long. My projection is to be in only three states. We are here in Lagos already, but we are looking at expanding to Abuja and Port Harcourt because our products are not for everybody. And then we plan to have a network of retailers all over the country.
What else do you do besides selling luxury perfumes?
This is all I do at present.
Where have you worked before now?
I have worked in advertising, telecommunications etc. I was a serial entrepreneur so to speak.
Ivory Ukonu is a versatile journalist with many years of experience, with entertainment and society reporting as her area of core competence.
