Selfridges Fragrance Lab experience


Selfridges has opened a new Fragrance Lab experience, which allows visitors to create their own scent


Blueprint

How do you smell? What should you smell like? And would you be comfortable sharing these issues with a set of strangers in white coats in a department store?

This is the basic premise of the Fragrance Lab at Selfridges - a fun pop up retail event that runs until the end of June.

Fragrance Lab. Photo: Hufton + Crow

Picture: © Hufton + Crow

It's a mixture of pure theatrical experience, olfactory interaction and sophisticated behind-the-scene matrix profiling. At the end of a literally labyrinthine process you walk away with a bottle of scent that best suits you, your personality and/or what you want to project.

It's been devised by trend forecasting consultancy Future Laboratory and design consultancy Campaign, but more of them later. The experience starts with you being met at the pseudo lab in the corner of the store by white-coated assistants. You take a kind of psychometric test on an iPad, before being politely asked to don a pair of headphones and do exactly as the susurrating voice tells you. This is your guide around an olfactory maze of self-discovery.

Your journey takes you through a set of sensory rooms - I think the cold was just over zealous air con - majoring on sight, sound, touch, and most importantly smell. The voice feeds you a mixture of new-age mysticism and nuggets about things like fascinating link between smell and memory. After each sensory room is a cleanser - a series of ever constricting white vestibules with vials of coffee beans, acting as a nasal sorbet. Finally you find yourself stumbling out into the corner window of the store for your final smellathon, providing a little theatre for the passers-by on Oxford Street. A white coat greets you and takes you through the final processes.

Fragrance Lab. Photo: Hufton + Crow

Picture: © Hufton + Crow

And start reading again here!

At the end of the experience, not only do they find a scent that is (hopefully) perfectly matched to you, but they also give you a potted personal profile (and this being retail they luckily leave out all your less attractive foibles).

You exit the lab with a little bag, containing your bottled essence. I asked friends and family about the personality traits and they all agreed it was spot on. As for the fragrance, I wanted something personal, and you know what, they got that right too.

Behind the scenes
As mentioned this project is a combination of work from designers Campaign and researchers Future Laboratory. Avid Blueprint reader may remember a similar, but more Wonkaesque taste-based experience they staged called the Sweet Shoppe (2011). That was self-promotional, but this time Selfridges stumped up for the customer-facing experience. Retail has been banging on about the high street delivering a theatrical experience for at least 15 years now, but it is still only the more experimental retailers like Selfridges who will put their money where their mouth is.

This is feeling it's way into a new kind of retail that as they say: 'an alternative to both in-store and online shopping emerges. What lies behind the seemingly simple experience is a complex matrix four years in the making that involves new methods of choice architecture and customer segmentation, allowing the experience to match the right product to the right customer. Within each stage there are different objectives and touch points used to create an immersive and sensorially engaging experience... customer habits, preferences and tastes, as well as their physical interaction, will be used in the future to develop a personalised service or product.'
At some stage the level of knowledge that retailers will have about us may just get a little bit scary, but for now, this has the whiff of success about it...

Fragrance Lab. Photo: Hufton + Crow

Picture: © Hufton + Crow

Until 30 June 2014
Selfridges, 400 Oxford Street, London W1A 1AB
www.selfridges.com/fragrancelab
Tickets are £65 and include a 50ml bottle of your signature scent.

Philip Handford, Creative Director at Campaign, and Kirsty Minns, Creative Director at The Future Laboratory, will talk about Fragrance Lab and Retail Futures at DX, May Design Series on Tuesday 20 May, 10.15am:

 








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