A background in graphic design taught these two business partners that their noses know the real deal when it comes to scents.
When it comes to perfume shopping on the net, it's virtually impossible to tell the sweet scents from the swamp water, but Adam Eastwood and Franco Wright have offered Angelinos a great place to learn about the good, better and best scents the world has to offer with their West Hollywood shop, Scent Bar, and companion website, www.LuckyScent.com.
How did it all start? Eastwood and Wright ran a graphic design studio for several years and found themselves doing a considerable amount of work for cosmetics and beauty companies.
"We gravitated toward those industries for some inexplicable reason," recalls Eastwood. "We then began to take a deepening interest in the products and trends we were seeing. Our office became positively littered with beauty products."
Eventually, they became drawn to fragrance above all else. And as they continued to work with their clients, they realized there was a void in the online marketplace. "Most websites that sold fragrance didn't do much beyond displaying a photo, the price and some cursory description -- they were boring and had no personality," Eastwood says. "We decided to create a site with a personality that would help people discover the intriguing world of small brand perfumes."
But Eastwood and Wright didn't just put any old perfume on the site. Instead, they and their writers road tested the fragrances for weeks to ensure their quality and salability before offering them up for public consumption. And the hard work didn't stop there. Each listing features the fragrance notes of each perfume, as well as their more subjective and visceral responses to them -- how the fragrances made them feel, what they made them see... in essence, helping shoppers virtually experience the fragrance as much as possible without the opportunity to test it for themselves.
Once the online venue was to their liking, Eastwood and Wright set out to create a brick-and-mortar counterpart that mimicked the online experience they'd created, offering a wide array of scents from across the world, but also giving customers the freedom to explore the way they saw fit.
"You will never come into our store and have the latest fad or trend thrust in your face -- we abhor the hard sell," Eastwood promises. "If someone comes into our store, the best thing they can do is discover something they never expected to find. If someone is vacillating between two fragrances, we would rather give them a sample of each and send them on their way to take them out for a spin to see which works for them. For us it's about making a connection. For us it's about helping someone find something that is right for them, not making sales projections."
With this kind of approach, www.LuckyScent.com and Scent Bar have attracted clientele from all walks of life, from serious perfume collectors to everyday people who are interested in scent. Eastwood reports that they have so many scents in the store, they've almost run out of shelf space. Noting their top seller as Kyoto by Comme des Garcons ($62 for 50ml), Eastwood would love to see everyone with the Rosso Nobile room diffuser by Dr. Vranjes, which is based on the essence of fine wine and comes in a wine bottle with a beautiful glass decanter and dried grape vines as the diffusing medium.
But if there's one valuable thing www.LuckyScent.com and Scent Bar customers will take away from their shopping experience, it's how to properly choose their scent.
Says Eastwood, "Your perfume needs to fit. You should wear a fragrance for at least 20 to 30 minutes to see how it dries down on you before you form an opinion. Many fragrances will smell completely different on your skin than they do right out of the bottle. Often people will try on two fragrances and favor one over the other. After the drydown, it's never surprising to find they've changed their mind and purchase the one they didn't like as much after initially applying."
Considering the selection available at Scent Bar and www.LuckyScent.com, it's not hard to see why customers continue their scent education time after time.
Visit Scent Bar at 8327 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90048, or drop by Lucky Scent online at www.luckyscent.com.
