Fragrance Retail: New Store Concepts

Boots’ Fragrance-Only Boutique & Wedding Consultations

Seeking to establish itself as a scent specialist to capture a greater market share of the booming perfume market, British health and beauty retailer Boots debuted a London fragrance-only boutique in October.

Stocking over 400 scents, visitors can browse both fragrances by brand as well as trending scent profiles, such as gourmand. Experts provide complimentary 45-minute services, such as signature scent discovery and wedding fragrance consultations for both brides and grooms.

Amouage’s Tech-Accented Heritage Boutique

Located in British luxury department store Harrods’ fragrance salon, Omani perfumer Amouage opened its boutique, The Tent, in October.

Marrying the brand’s Middle Eastern heritage with futuristic design elements to reinforce the notion of being both heritage-rich and forward-looking, the circular space is inspired by Bedouin tents. It is accented by tech-inspired chrome fixtures such as faux curtains cast in silver, while its ceiling is cloaked in the same material.

A consultation table at the centre contains resin shapes displaying perfume scent profiles and individual fragrance notes. Visitors can place their preferred scent components on a tray and, using radio frequency identification technology (which uses electromagnetic fields to identify and track objects), Amouage perfumes featuring the selected notes are illuminated on an adjacent wall.

Koyia’s Forest-Bathing-Anchored Commerce

Harnessing the wellbeing-boosting effects of spending time in nature, in September 2025, Swedish fragrance brand Koyia launched a remote forest-based store, enabling consumers to purchase perfume by spending time, rather than money.

Located in a forest in Småland, Southern Sweden, the unmanned store comprises a hemp podium displaying glass jars of Koyia perfume. Visitors ‘pay’ for the fragrance (usually SEK 599/ $62.63) by spending 599 seconds in nature – a process automated by scanning a QR code with a smartphone, which triggers a timer. When the time is up, a bottle of perfume is released.

Initio Parfums Privés Pioneers Neuroscience-Led AI Fragrance Discovery

Debuting in the brand’s Paris flagship store in September 2025, French luxury fragrance brand Initio Parfums Privés’ Feel Lab is a scent discovery experience that uses EEG technology (which measures brainwave activity) to pair consumers with their optimal wellbeing-boosting scent.

Created in partnership with Chinese neurotechnologists BrainCo and US-based Harvard Innovation Labs, shoppers taking part in the experience wear a Feel’Tech headset (from global data specialists Micropole) to record their subconscious brain activity while trialling scents. The brainwave data is then translated using AI into a FocusCalm score, which quantifies how much each fragrance resonated with an individual’s state of wellbeing.

For more, see our Wellbeing Macro, publishing on November 17.