A year ago, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was building with Wick.ed Aromas.
I really didn't.
At the time, I was mostly focused on what was right in front of me. The next market. The next event. What we needed to make. What we needed to sell.
That was Wick.ed Aromas for a while.
We made candles. We did markets. We did events. We tried different products. We talked to a lot of people. We figured things out as we went.
And honestly, that was important.
One of the things I didn't fully understand at the beginning was what it meant for me personally to be the person standing behind the table.
I'm a Black man making fragrance.
There aren't a lot of people who look like me doing this, especially in the spaces where I was selling.
I started noticing how much attention that got.
Black people would come up and talk to me about it. Sometimes people wanted to take pictures with me. Sometimes the conversation wasn't even really about the candle or the fragrance at first. It was about seeing somebody who looked like them doing something they didn't see very often.
That stuck with me.
It made me realise there was something about my presence that I hadn't really thought about when we first started Wick.ed Aromas.
I wasn't just selling something. I was also showing people something they didn't see every day.
And that became one of the things I started thinking about more as the year went on.
Somewhere Along the Way, I Became a Perfumer
I didn't start out trying to become a perfumer.
When I was first working on our roller perfumes, the jojoba oil ones, I started thinking, "Wait. I could probably do a lot more than this."
So I bought some materials.
Then I started smelling them.
Then I bought more.
I started watching videos. I got on Instagram and started finding people who were actually talking about perfumery. I had people around me who were already into perfume, so I started asking them questions about what they owned.
What did they notice about it?
What did they like?
What didn't they like?
What did they smell first?
I was basically trying to understand why people liked the perfumes they liked.
And that turned into something much bigger for me.
I stopped being satisfied with just making something that smelled good.
I wanted to know what was actually happening.
Why does this material do that?
Why does something disappear?
Why does one material completely take over another?
Why can two things smell good separately and then become something completely different together?
That's when I really started getting into dilution, structure, IFRA, formulation math, raw materials, accords and material behaviour.
And I'm still learning.
Honestly, there's a lot I don't know.
But that's part of what I like about it now.
I don't want somebody to just give me a formula and tell me, "Here, make this."
I want to understand enough that I can figure out why something isn't working and make the decision myself.
Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia has always been there for me.
I grew up there, so it's not something I had to discover later in life. It's already part of how I see the world.
But I've started thinking about it differently this year.
I've been thinking about what Saint Lucia could mean for Wick.ed Aromas, but also what it could mean for me personally down the line.
A big part of that has been smell.
I've been thinking about cannelle tea. That smell in the morning or at night. Cinnamon. Milk. Spices. Condensed milk. The whole thing.
I've also been thinking about cocoa tea, especially the actual cocoa. The cocoa comes from the plant and gets made into a cocoa stick, and then you turn that into the drink.
And soursop leaves.
Those are things I've been trying to recreate as fragrances for a while now.
I don't know exactly when those will become releases. I'm not rushing them.
But I already know that if I eventually put those out, I want them to feel like they came from somewhere real.
I don't want to make a fragrance and call it Caribbean just because it has coconut, tropical fruit and something sweet in it.
That doesn't mean anything by itself.
If I'm going to make something connected to Saint Lucia, I want to understand what I'm actually trying to capture.
I want to be there. I want to smell things. I want to pay attention to what people actually use, eat, drink and grow.
I want to understand the place better before I start trying to put it into a bottle.
And that's probably going to take time.
What Happened to Wick.ed Aromas This Year
When I look back at this year, I don't really see a straight line.
There were periods where I was working constantly.
There were periods where I wasn't in the studio at all.
There were times I felt like I was making progress and other times where I honestly wasn't sure what I was doing.
There was a point where I took months away from the studio. Months.
I got away from the work enough that I actually forgot some of my formulas. I forgot what certain materials smelled like. I had to go back and remind myself of things I had already worked on.
That was frustrating.
I was trying to deal with life while also trying to build a small business, and at the same time I was realising that the way we had been doing things wasn't really working anymore.
So there was a lot to figure out at once.
That realisation is basically what led us to the relaunch.
But the relaunch isn't just new packaging.
It's not just new labels.
It's not just putting a different bottle on the website and calling it a day.
We're redesigning Wick.ed Aromas from the bottom up.
The way the brand looks.
The way the fragrances are presented.
The products we're focusing on.
The kind of customers and businesses we want to work with.
The experiences we want to create.
The way we think about fragrance itself.
A lot of it is changing.
And honestly, that has taken longer than I wanted it to.
I'm Thinking Further Ahead Now
A year ago, I was thinking a lot about the next event.
Now I'm thinking about the next five years.
I'm thinking about fine fragrance. Wholesale. Hotels and hospitality. Fragrance experiences. Collaborations. Education. Saint Lucia.
I'm also thinking about what it would actually take for Wick.ed Aromas to become something bigger than just what we can do ourselves at a market.
I don't have all of that figured out.
There are still a lot of questions.
But I have a much better idea of what I don't want than I did a year ago.
I know I don't want to spend the next five years chasing markets just because that's what we've always done.
I know I don't want fragrance to be an afterthought.
I know I don't want Saint Lucia to just be something we mention in our story because it sounds good.
And I know I don't want to build a business that doesn't make sense for the life I'm trying to have eventually.
A Year Later
I don't think this was the easiest year for Wick.ed Aromas.
There were a lot of things I wish had gone differently.
There were things we had to stop doing.
There were times I stepped away from the studio.
There were moments where I questioned whether we were actually moving forward.
But I also learned things that I don't think I could have learned any other way.
I learned what it feels like to have people look at you differently because you're a Black man making perfume.
I learned that I actually want to become a better perfumer, not just somebody who happens to make fragrances.
I learned that some of the ideas I have for Wick.ed Aromas are going to take years, not months.
And I learned that sometimes you have to admit that the way you've been doing something isn't working before you can figure out what to do next.
So no, I don't have everything figured out.
I'm still trying to figure out the relaunch.
I'm still learning perfumery.
I'm still working out what Saint Lucia's role in all of this will eventually be.
But I don't think that's a bad place to be.
A year later, I just know that I'm not trying to build the same Wick.ed Aromas anymore.