The Future of Fragrance Sampling

Embark on an innovative fragrance journey with Tejal Agrawal, founder of Edulge Limited.
As a pioneering sampling subscription platform, Edulge pushes boundaries, revolutionising fragrance consumption with education and accessibility at its core. Join us as we discuss the upcoming challenges and exciting innovations arising from the growing demand and interest in fragrance sampling!

Fragrance sampling has seen a huge surge in popularity in recent years within the industry. What key factors do you believe have contributed to this market growth?

The growth in demand for sampling is a symptom of the growth in demand for fragrance itself. Fuelled predominately by social platforms, defined trends in scents, notes and styles are appearing. These trends are moving ever quicker and the global nature of such platforms means the fragrances and brands featured are vast and often times quite obscure. This new style of fragrance ‘edu- tainment’ is building a growing community of fragrance lovers wishing to emulate their favourite influencers and build a wardrobe of scents to call upon.

In turn, with so many great fragrances being discussed and budgets varying by consumer, the ability to try it first has almost become a hygiene factor for consumers. But where do you go if you don’t live near a well-stocked perfumery or department store to try these scents? Indeed, they may well have not even made it into those stores yet or consumers may want to experience the dry down before committing to a full bottle...tricky to do unless you revisit the store in a few hours!

How does Edulge meet innovatively the demands of the sampling market?

We are just in the midst of rolling out samples for every fragrance we stock so that customers can try it before committing to a full bottle. We also offer discovery sets of samples grouped by fragrance families. As we stock multiple brands, it allows us to feature the ‘best of’ from different brands allowing a much broader sampling experience. There are a few new edits coming up soon that I think customers will be super excited about.

Which brands and fragrance markets are particularly experiencing a positive response within the sampling market?

I would say primarily brands that are difficult to buy in the UK invariably do well with regard to sampling demand.

Sampling also facilitates fragrance education. What is Edulge's approach to combining fragrance education with the shopping experience?

We try and provide as much information for each product we stock, not just the brand or marketing story.

Each product we list has information such as the nose behind the scent, the strength of the fragrance, the fragrance family, the top, heart and base notes that you can hover over or click on to learn more about the ingredients, and more.

If customers want to learn even more, the ‘Notes’ section includes our perfume glossary, the ability to book a fragrance consultation, articles on the world of perfumery and our scent selector tool to find their perfect scent.

What are the latest challenges and exciting developments within the fragrance sampling market?

I think trust is a very important factor for customers. They need to feel confident that the sample is genuine. For us, as official stockists of all our brands and the fact that we do sell the full size too, gives assurance to our customers...that and our 5.0 review status!

How does Edulge leverage technology and digital platforms to enhance the fragrance sampling experience for customers?

As an online retailer, we can adapt quicker to market demands in terms of hot new brand onboarding, and new discovery kits that can be made live at the click of a button, but at the heart of our business is exceptional customer service and this can only be excelled at with a human making decisions and at the end of emails, DM, phone etc.

How do fragrance sampling and sampling subscriptions advance sustainable solutions in fragrance consumption?

Sampling reduces the waste of near-full bottles of fragrance that you regret buying, and end up throwing away. Instead, sampling ensures that we all buy only what we love and will use!

What sensorial experiences are you hopeful to see in the future in fragrance retail, both virtually and in person?

Would love to send e-samples to consumers by email/DM that could be printed at home and sniffed... imagine if printers could interpret and ‘print’ a scent on paper in the same way that printers today interpret and print a photo...now that would be a game changer!