Made in Scotland: Jorum Studio Perfume
This weeks Made in Scotland blog, a series we run with J Boult Designs to highlight Scotlands best small businesses, features the innovative fragrances of Jorum Studio. A small business based in Edinburgh, Jorum Studio is operated by Scottish perfumer Euan and his partner Chloe. Made in house with the highest quality raw materials, you won’t want to miss a visit if you are ever in Edinburgh!
Can you tell us how your business got started?
We started our business as Jorum Laboratories over ten years ago in 2010. Originally, we only focussed on fragrance formulation, manufacturing and consulting for many different companies all over the world. Our founder Euan is a perfumer with over 15 years of experience in the field. He set up Jorum as a boutique fragrance house operating with quality and innovation focussed operators in a confidential manner.
The business is more complex now and encompasses Jorum Laboratories (our global formulation and manufacturing operation), Jorum Studio (our self-directed perfume brand), HEROWN (our interior scenting arm) as well as using our platform to help incubate early-stage businesses in this space. Last year we launched the Jorum Craft Award in partnership with Craft Scotland. The Jorum Craft Award is entirely self-funded, providing micro-funding to craft makers based in Scotland. Craft Scotland are a vital partner to deliver this project.
Where do you look for inspiration when you are designing new products?
Jorum Studio inspiration can come from anywhere but typically from an experience (a place, an encounter, a memory etc.) and how this experience can be captured or represented using raw materials in an innovative manner to create a totally unique, wearable and enjoyable perfume. Quality and craft are our preoccupations – quality of the materials, their handling, the end product, the new experience and the engagement our customers have with our perfumes. In other cases, the raw material itself functions as an inspiration. We create mood boards that comprise many different types of stimuli – music, visuals, fabrics, typography, architecture, current and historic figures that were pioneers whose work connects with the new formula idea etc., a real smorgasbord.
When working with our clients (those commissioning new formulations for their own enterprises), we still seek or find inspiration in raw materials but in most instances, the inspiration comes from the client brief and talking with the client’s team and how we can render the idea using raw materials and our ingenuity to create new and unique experiences for their customers.
Can you tell us a bit more about how you make your products?
Everything we do perfume-wise at Jorum is 100% made in house and 100% Made in Scotland. This is very unique, there is no other international fine fragrance house in Scotland operating in an end-to-end manner. Our raw materials come from far and near. We use very high quality raw materials that are harvested and extracted 30 minutes away in Fife – a hyperlocal supply, we use some from artisan distillers in England as well as aromatics from the farthest reaches on earth – if you can think of a country, they probably produce some form of aromatic and we most probably import these. Most Jorum perfumes comprise over 80% of naturally derived, sustainable raw materials and from Scottish producers. If our Scottish suppliers are low, we source from across the UK but we aim to produce our products using as soft a footprint as possible and as local and sustainable as possible – not easy in perfumery but our outlook is one of balance without compromise and where we can, we will.
Other noble raw materials are sourced from the best producers, those offering the highest quality material and this means we have a global supply chain as most aromatic raw materials are cultivated, harvested, distilled or produced outside of the UK.
Our perfumes take a long time to create, typically 3 years. Once we are happy with a formulation and all of the safety and compliance elements are finalised, we enter raw material procurement, QC and then production before our perfumes are matured and macerated for several weeks. We QC along the way and at specific stages before bottling. We work with a handful of packaging suppliers all making in the UK, artisans in their own right really.
Once each element is complete, we assemble and final QC before the end product is stored carefully under specific conditions which we monitor closely. Jorum Studio has over 30 international stockists and this is growing steadily, we deal with all of the export and logistics in-house too (no mean feat as shipping perfume legally and legitimately has its challenges!).
With other clients, we can provide a stepped service – a client can have us involved as much or as little as they wish and as such, we can have little to do with a project beyond formulating and manufacturing the product or in some instances, we practically run the back-end of the client’s operation on their behalf, allowing them to focus on sales and marketing etc.
What are your most popular products and which are your own favourites?
Admittedly, sales are strong across the entire range and this is a result of Jorum Studio being a global brand – some perfumes sell higher in certain parts of the world as a result of cultural tastes. In all, this results in a pretty even performance across the board which is great for production as we produce the same amount of each fragrance with every batch.
In our flagship boutique on Saint Stephen Street in Edinburgh, our marginally higher performers are Trimerous, Nectary and Athenaeum. Euan’s favourite is Trimerous and Athenaeum (if he really, really had to choose) and my favourite is Carduus (if I really, really, really had to choose!). We really do love all of our perfumes otherwise we wouldn’t launch them. Each one has a bold character is complex and has their own special point of being, they are daring and highly original, so it is hard to choose a favourite as it depends on mood, weather, season… what is on the schedule for the day. With that said, Euan rarely wears perfume as he is always formulating, I on the other hand never leave the house without perfume. We always buy and sample other makers products, not from a competitive or assessment angle, we just adore perfume. As cliché as it sounds, we live, breathe and probably bleed perfumery – it is such a magical craft.
If you had to pick one place in Scotland to recommend that people visit, where would it be?
We really enjoyed our time in Kingussie a few years back. A small town in the Cairngorms and a perfect base to do a lot of varied outdoor activities if that’s what you like. Kingussie is also great for doing very little besides thinking. At the other side of the Cairngorms is Braemar and equally as good fun. The night sky is so clear in that region, the stars are so bright! On the other hand, Edinburgh really is a great city and Glasgow too. We always talk of trying to take a break and visit one or several of the islands however our business really is an all-consuming part of our life that currently leaves us very little time to do anything besides focussing on the business – it’s a 20 hour per day, 7 days per week juggernaut that is relentless.
We are huge fans of Jorum and enjoy a sneak visit to their shop whenever we are in the are! Why not browse their gorgeous online collection online, facebook and on Instagram.
