Our Wild fans have created so much buzz over the last 2 years for our Wild fragrances. From Peach Bellini to Toffee Apple to Candy Floss, we certainly know how to keep things exciting with our deodorant scents.

But let’s take it back to where our scents are developed and created; come with us to our fragrance house

Ultimately, our scent creation starts with you. At Wild HQ, we will brainstorm what different fragrances we think you would love for that month or season, as well as ask what scents people want. We will put those in a poll and welcome our customers to vote on which scents they would love. We put this all into consideration and shortlist roughly 5 to 6 scents that we send in an in-depth brief to the fragrance house.

Marketing Team

The marketing team is responsible for creating trend reports where they will look at what new fragrances and products leading brands are launching, what’s driving innovation at the moment like what colours are popular and what home decor is trending. All of this lends into creating reports for what the current fragrance trends are. These reports come in very handy when we are brainstorming what different fragrances you will all enjoy in time to come, and sometimes these will be the fragrances that we present to you in polls to vote on. Don’t forget, when choosing new fragrances for Wild, we have to think many months in advance so have to predict what you will all be loving!

Sales Team

We work very closely with the sales team at the fragrance house. They are the team we brief our new scent choices to and liaise with during the whole fragrance selection process as well as any scent re-formulation processes. The sales team will look at reference products to understand what type of fragrance we are looking for. To do this, they will use the product room and look at the genealogy chart to gain inspiration on the scents, then talk to the perfumer to define what Wild wants

Product Room

They have a product room filled with various household products ranging from washing detergent to reed diffusers.

The sales team and perfumers may go there for inspiration on the scent when creating new fragrances or developing the scent for brands. For instance, fragrances such as our fresh cotton & sea salt fragrance, they may go there to gain ideas from fresh linen smelling washing detergent.

Genealogy Chart

Genealogy charts come in very useful when we brief in the fragrance house with scents.

The chart is made up of the different fragrance families like oriental, chypre, fruity, floral, fougere and then also segmented into the different fragrance notes that fall under each fine fragrance family. These include citrus, green, woody, aromatic and fresh notes. Often the perfumers or sales team will document different leading or known fragrances on the genealogy chart to compare which fragrance family they fall under. If we say we want a floral scent or our scent to smell similar to a perfume on the market, they are able to look at where it may lie on the fine fragrance genealogy chart and develop it from there.

The Perfumers

The perfumers will then go ahead with making some magic and begin creating the fragrances in our brief. They put their talented noses to the test and mix up various different essential oils and fine fragrances to eventually master up the delicious scents we grace our armpits with - but this process isn’t quite as easy as it may sound.

They have to carefully weigh out each fragrance to get the perfect combo. This takes a combination between chemistry and art, and isn’t an easy job! They’ll do this in their perfumer’s studio, analysing how much of each ingredient and fine fragrance will be needed to create the perfect scent.

Sometimes we will brief-in fragrances through a moodboard. For instance, we may know we want a floral fresh fragrance which reminds people of strolling through a spring meadow, but we may not know exactly what scent we are looking for. The moodboard might include pictures of what we want people to be reminded of when they smell the fragrance, or colours we would match with it. The perfumer can then use this as a reference when they analyse which fine fragrances they want to include in their scent and how much of each.

Perfumers have to understand the stability of each material and the notes of each fine fragrance. Fragrances are split into 3 different layers: top notes, middle notes and base notes. For instance, top notes are the scents of the perfume you smell first but only last for the initial hour. Then you have the middle notes that last a little bit longer but eventually fade after around 3 hours. Then finally you have the base notes. These notes are often the woody notes which are the scents you will smell after hours of wearing the fragrance. All of these factors have to be taken into consideration when the perfumer is creating the scent, and the genealogy chart proves very useful in this process.

The Lab

Once the perfumer is happy with the fragrances, they are then taken to the lab for deodorant samples to be created.

Everyone at the lab will understand what’s in the base of the fragrance and be able to replicate the scent that the perfumer has mastered. Throughout this process, a lot of Health & Safety checks will be made on the fragrances to ensure they are safe for consumers to use. The fragrances will also be tested on in the testing rooms to ensure the scent is long lasting. The samples will be made into small pots and sent back to Wild where we will get the team at Wild HQ to put their noses to the test and deliberate on the scents.

We will all smell the samples and vote on our favourites within the office. We will also discuss if we think any improvements could be made. All of this feedback is then taken back to the fragrance house where they will create even more refined samples. This is a very iterative process and often the fragrances will go back and forth between the fragrance house and Wild HQ until we are set on the perfect fragrance(s).

After this, the fragrance house will send the fragrance to our deodorant factory where they will put the desired percentage of fragrance into the deodorant base, and then it’s good to go to the packing facility and then send it to Wild customers to protect everyone from stinky pits!