Olfactory NYC Uses Fragrance Customization To Power Customer Discovery And Retention

When Joseph Vittoria launched Olfactory NYC in 2017, it sold high-quality fragrances made affordable by stripping away expensive marketing and packaging. Customization wasn’t part of the plan.

“There are those customization processes online where you go through those quizzes and I was like, ‘This is such a gimmick,’” he says. “I mean, asking you what movie you like does not in any way affect what fragrance you are going to like.” 

Vittoria soon realized, however, that an interactive experience stoked customer loyalty, but he didn’t want to do it how it had previously been done. Olfactory NYC’s customization process is designed so that even fragrance novices can dream up a personalized scent—and it doesn’t ask about movies. 

The process is split into three steps: First, there’s an $18 Explorer Box with nine core scents, and customers select a favorite from among the core scents. Second, they receive a Tinkerer Box, which is $7 after applying an $18 credit from the Explorer Box, with six custom variations of their favorite core scent. Finally, they select their favorite from the six custom variations. If customers have trouble with the process, a scentologist can assist them. 

Altogether, the three steps are priced at $85, and customers get a 50-ml. size of their personalized fragrance at the end. Olfactory NYC simplifies the scent creation process by using core scents as the bases of its fragrances rather than having customers concoct fragrance bases. Customers name their custom fragrance and choose the color of its bottle. Non-custom options are available for $55. Olfactory NYC is a steal if you consider that Tom Ford’s Black Orchid rings in at $150 for a 50 ml.-size.

Vittoria points out Olfactory NYC isn’t “trying to recreate what these master perfumers have done.” He explains, “What we look to do is to give people a way to take this beautiful work of art, add your own personal touch to it, and you end up with something that you call your own.”

Olfactory NYC has branded brick-and-mortar stores in the Manhattan neighborhoods NoLita and West Village, where its custom scents are priced the same as they are online. The majority of new customers discover Olfactory NYC via the stores. Sixty-five percent of its transactions happen in its stores. Growth has been strong for the company both online and in its physical locations. This year, Vittoria expects sales to increase 100%. 

Olfactory NYC has achieved a 32% customer retention rate. The average customer retention rate for fragrance is 16.7%, according to e-commerce growth platform Metrilo. In addition to fragrances, Olfactory NYC’s customers can purchase candles, body washes and lotions in its core scents, and they can turn their custom spritzes into home diffusers. Before the holidays this year, customers will be able to turn their custom scents into body lotions and washes, too. “Once you put your name on something, we expect that people would want to get it again,” says Vittoria, mentioning more stores in and out of New York City could be on the horizon for Olfactory NYC. 

“Once you put your name on something, we expect that people would want to get it again.”

The company’s marketing efforts are focused on word of mouth and social media. In particular, TikTok has been producing great returns. Olfactory NYC has drawn nearly 600,000 likes on the platform, where it showcases its offerings interspersed with pop culture references and jokes about its operations. There’s a thriving appetite for fragrance information on TikTok that’s reflective of robust interest in fragrances overall. According to The NPD Group, prestige fragrance sales gained 13% in the second quarter of this year to reach $1.5 billion. 

“TikTok is interesting, it’s much more of a level playing field,” says Vittoria. “With Instagram, what you get is what you pay for, but, on TikTok, any person with 2,000 followers can have a video that goes viral and gets 5 million views. It’s more for brands that are less curated and more fun. We’ve definitely seen progress on TikTok that we never saw on Instagram.”

Vittoria, a former equity analyst at UBS, called his business Olfactory NYC to emphasize that people should concentrate on what’s in the bottle rather than a celebrity endorser or designer label. He’s big on spotlighting master perfumers Olfactory NYC partners with, including Frank Voelkl, who worked on Le Labo’s Santal 33 and Glossier’s You; Honorine Blanc, who worked on YSL’s Black Opium; and Harry Fremont, who worked on Calvin Klein’s CK One and Tom Ford’s Tuscan Leather. Voelkl, Blanc and Fremont are Firmenich perfumers. 

Vittoria says, “You have these master perfumes at the top of their field, there really aren’t that many of them like under a hundred, they are masters of an art form, and no one knows who they are.”