🍀 the brand Ffern

One of the essential notes of any luxury marketing strategy is leaning into heritage and history. The ancient founding story, the iconic survival of the brand over centuries, culminating into a masterfully crafted brand which exudes high-class.

Now, what do you do if you were only founded a few years ago?

Pack up your stuff, you’re out of luck. 

Ffern, the fragrance brand founded in 2017 has all the answers…

Everyone is calling them the most exclusive fragrance in the world, yet you can get your hands on a bottle for the same price as a pair of Air Force Ones. But before we get into HOW they do it, let’s take a step into the history of the fragrance industry.

Perfume ads are weird. There I said it.

Fragrance brands grapple with 1 fundamental problem when trying to sell perfume, they can’t actually communicate the smell or qualities of a specific perfume in an ad or on their site.

Instead, brands have to rely on something completely different. Vibes. 🤘

They build their brand, write their copy, and format their creative to evoke specific emotions.

Why? The parts of the brain that deal with emotion, memory, and motivation all grow out of the olfactory cortex (aka where you SMELL). That’s why we develop core memories and deep emotional connections alongside specific smells.

It’s this brain-nose connection that is incredibly important for fragrance brands when they’re trying to get you to add to cart. 

Hence why the emotional power of scent as it relates to sex is so prominent (like in this Chanel ad below). 

Now the majority of fragrance brands are honed in on the implication that fragrance will make you more sexually attractive, but there is one family fragrance house that’s taking a completely different approach…Ffern.

I’m someone who blushes when I type the ‘s’ word, so this is already more up my alley. Go Ffern.

Founded in 2017 by brother and sister duo, Owen Mears and Emily Cameron, Ffern was born out of a reminiscence of the rich olfactory landscape that comprised much of their childhood. 

Having spent years studying the history of fragrance at Oxford University, Owen became obsessed with a natural fragrance pioneer from the late 1800s who went by the name Joseph Robert.

Joseph Robert discovered the process called “solvent extraction”, to get increasingly strong oils from natural ingredients, which has largely directed the natural perfume industry today and inspired Owen and Emily to found Ffern.

While Owen and Emily worked to craft Ffern’s first-ever scent, they met with 2 notable fragrance experts, Francois Robert and Elodie Durande. Unbeknownst to Owen, Francois Robert was the great grandson of the legendary Joseph Robert who happened to be the catalyst behind Owen’s infatuation with fragrances. I love shit like this. 

The moon’s stars aligned and Ffern released their 1st fragrance in December of 2018 on the Winter Solstice.

(Side note – I have a client currently that has us launch at 4:44pm and who also aligns their marketing calendar in a similar way – we’re careful during retrograde LOL).

But here’s where the magic starts.

Ffern took a stand – they believed they could change how fragrance was purchased, and built their whole business model around this belief. 

Because scent is a deeply personal expression of who we are as humans, it’s an incredibly intimate and calculated purchase.

And once we find a scent that we like, we tend to stick to it for a WHILE. Which means consumers are only buying a new fragrance once their old one runs out. To take a risk on a new fragrance, you’d have to be bought in all the way.

And so Ffern REALLY WENT FOR IT. Because they needed to force buy in or it wasn’t going to work.

They built a DTC-subscription meets old school luxury model that is positioned around the importance seasonality has on fragrances. ❄️ 🌷 🌞🍂

To buy a fragrance from Ffern you must join a waiting list, then names are drawn at random to join a crowded ledger (it’s literally called a ledger) and  seasonal fragrance releases are made available to 4 times/year. Once you are on the ledger, you will receive the seasonal fragrances until you decide to take your name off. And if you’re not on the ledger, none for you. 

The bottles are made from recycled materials, and the scents aren’t deemed “timeless” like their competitors (remember Ffern wants us to buy new fragrances each season), instead they’re described as aged to perfection. 

Also I just love the little CTA, “Request from Concierge”. It is literally just customer support, but doesn’t Request from Concierge hit??? 

I for 1 would like to visit the newly opened flagship Ffern store in downtown London. I think it’ll be more fun to buy from Ffern’s London store than Chanel’s – and that says a lot because I’m a classic flap girl. 

Which yes, the Ffern store looks and feels exactly like what you’d expect from a brand that was dreamed up at Oxford. 

I wanted to end this email with “smell you later” but that would be just so off brand from the Ffern vibes today so ignore me. 

P.S. My friend Margaux offered to ship me her Summer ’24 Ffern because I missed it. CUTE.

P.P.S. I 1st learned of Ffern only this year, when our Go-to-Millions best friend Erin recommended it to me over email when I last wrote about perfume. CUTE.