Ten Years of Perfume Playground

An unexpected discovery in India, a promise to follow a dream, and ten years of creating through scent.

Ten years ago, Perfume Playground began with a slightly audacious idea, a collection of crystal perfume bottles and a promise I made to myself.

I had no idea where it would take me.

I certainly didn’t imagine that a decade later, I’d be reflecting on ten years of building a fragrance business across Australia and New Zealand, creating scents for remarkable people and brands, and discovering just how much a business can teach you about yourself.

But perhaps I should start at the beginning.

Where it all began

Some of my earliest memories of fragrance are of watching my mother get ready to go out.

She’d put on perfume, and something would change. She was still Mum, of course, but another side of her seemed to emerge.

Growing up, fragrances like CK One, Davidoff Cool Water, Tommy Girl, Sunflowers and Clinique Happy captured my imagination. They represented identity, possibility and the idea that scent could make you feel like someone different.

I was fascinated by that.

I’d experimented with making soaps and fragrances over the years, but becoming a perfumer never seemed like an obvious career path. I imagined I’d need to study in France, which felt out of reach without the language or the money.

Instead, I studied pharmacology and psychology and built a career in marketing, events and project management, eventually working at The Icehouse, a business incubator for entrepreneurs in Auckland.

Then, in September 2015, they made me redundant.

Around the same time, my best friend’s mother passed away. We decided to travel to India together.

And somewhere in Rajasthan, everything changed.

I stumbled upon a shop filled with beautiful crystal glass perfume bottles. I was completely captivated and, without much of a plan, bought the shop’s stock.

I sent the bottles home through India Post and promised myself that if they arrived safely, I’d finally pursue my dream of becoming a perfumer.

They arrived.

And I remember thinking, Oh. Now I actually have to do this.

Following my nose

What followed was something of an Eat, Pray, Love year.

I spent six months in the garage of my Ponsonby flat exploring natural perfume materials from a kit created by perfumer Mandy Aftel.

I studied natural perfumery and aromatherapy, travelled to Berkeley to learn from Mandy herself, explored flower essences, attended a ten-day silent retreat and immersed myself in conferences and conversations about creativity, entrepreneurship and the senses.

I didn’t have a conventional career plan.

I followed my curiosity, learned everything I could, and slowly discovered how to bring my interests in science, psychology, plants, wellbeing, and creativity together.

By May 2016, I was working with private clients to create bespoke natural fragrances and sensory experiences.

My first paying client was my flatmate, Dr Cat Stone of The Face Place.

Then, in October 2016, Perfume Playground officially launched as part of Auckland Artweek.

Eleven people and a big idea

Our first Perfume Playground Club welcomed eleven guests.

It was a two-hour fragrance-making workshop accompanied by a sensory garden of rongoā Māori medicinal plants.

I’d imagined this experience for so long, and suddenly it was happening.

People were smelling, experimenting, discovering ingredients and creating something entirely personal.

I remember feeling extraordinarily happy.

There was something almost spiritual about watching an idea I’d carried around in my head come to life.

Ten years later, that original two-hour workshop still exists. We now call it The Classic Club.

It’s changed and evolved over the years, but the idea at its heart remains the same: giving people the freedom to explore scent, trust their instincts and discover something about themselves through the creative process.

Some of our early opportunities included a fragrance commission for the Corsini exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery, alongside sensory workshops for gallery members.

Little by little, Perfume Playground was finding its place.

Taking Perfume Playground beyond Auckland

After proving the concept in New Zealand during that first year, I started looking further afield.

Between 2017 and 2019, I spent a lot of time travelling, building relationships and introducing Perfume Playground to new audiences.

I hosted workshops in Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington and even San Francisco, while developing opportunities across Australia and New Zealand.

By 2019, we were gaining real traction in Australia.

It was exciting to discover that an idea born in Auckland could connect with people in completely different cities.

But I was also learning that being presented with an opportunity didn’t necessarily mean I needed to pursue it.

When COVID arrived in 2020, I had to rethink how and where we operated.

After years of exploring different markets, I realised it was time to focus.

I chose Melbourne and Auckland as the two cities where I wanted to build a stronger, more sustainable business.

It was an important lesson: growth isn’t always about doing more. Sometimes it’s about deciding where to put your energy.

Becoming a perfumer

For a long time, I hesitated to call myself a perfumer.

Instead, I used the title Scent Designer.

Despite the training, the clients, and the work, part of me wondered whether I’d earned the right to use the word.

In those early years, Radio New Zealand interviewed me, and publications like Fashion Quarterly, Viva, and Idealog featured me.

And still, I sometimes felt like an imposter.

But I kept learning.

And I kept creating.

Over the past decade, I’ve developed fragrances for individuals, businesses and design-led lifestyle brands across fashion, automotive, hospitality, fitness and the arts.

I’ve worked on everything from personal perfumes and signature brand scents to spatial scenting, candles and immersive sensory experiences.

One particularly meaningful project was developing HER for People of Eden, which received Bronze in the Floral Perfume category of the Clean + Conscious Awards.

Every project has taught me something.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped questioning whether I could call myself a perfumer.

Today, I am.

The part nobody tells you about

When I started Perfume Playground, I imagined spending my days creating perfume.

And I do get to do that.

But I’ve also spent an extraordinary amount of time learning about financial models, margins, contracts, compliance, proposals, marketing, sales and managing people.

I’ve had incredible opportunities, made difficult decisions, and learned some expensive lessons.

One of the most important?

Have a contract. Always.

Another is that an exciting opportunity isn’t necessarily profitable.

And loving your business doesn’t mean everyone who works with you will have the same emotional investment.

I’ve had to separate my identity from the business, understand the numbers, and make decisions that aren’t always the most creatively exciting.

Perfume Playground has expanded, contracted, changed direction and reinvented itself more than once.

I’ve had moments when I thought I’d finally figured everything out.

Then something changed, and I had to figure it out again.

That’s one of the less glamorous truths about entrepreneurship.

You don’t necessarily arrive at a point where everything is sorted.

You become better at navigating what isn’t.

When life changes the dream

Becoming a mother to twins has been one of the biggest changes of all.

I took nine months of maternity leave, and both businesses continued without me.

That was something I’d worked towards, and I was proud of it.

But returning to work was harder than I expected.

The businesses I’d built before children didn’t necessarily fit the life I wanted afterwards.

I had to rethink things again.

For a long time, my ambitions focused on how far I could take Perfume Playground. I wanted to create something extraordinary, work with incredible brands and see just how big the business could become.

I still have ambitious creative goals.

But motherhood has changed my relationship with time and what success means to me.

These days, I work around 20 hours a week, something I couldn’t have imagined when I first started.

I’m proud to have created that flexibility.

The next challenge isn’t necessarily to work less. It’s to build a business that’s commercially strong, creatively exciting and sustainable within the life I’ve chosen.

I still want to create extraordinary things. I just don’t believe that requires working extraordinary hours.

Perhaps one of the biggest changes is that I feel less pressure to take every opportunity, prove myself or measure success only by how much the business grows.

It’s taken ten years to develop that confidence.

And I’m still working on it.

What comes next?

When I imagine the next ten years, I don’t necessarily imagine an enormous company.

Over the past decade, I’ve had the opportunity to create fragrances and sensory experiences for design-led, conscious lifestyle brands across fashion, automotive, hospitality, fitness, and the arts.

I want to keep collaborating with people curious about what scent can bring to their world, exploring more ambitious ideas and unexpected creative partnerships.

After ten years of creating fragrances for other people, brands, and spaces, I know I want to create a fragrance collection of my own.

Something that reflects my own ideas, memories and creative instincts.

No client brief, no one else’s vision. Just the freedom to create.

I’d also love to establish a fund for scent experimentation, giving myself and others permission to explore ideas that don’t necessarily need an immediate commercial outcome.

I want to give back through creative experiences that allow people to discover something new about themselves.

And I imagine a small, energised team, recurring revenue and a business that can thrive without needing me at the centre of everything.

I’ve already created a more flexible working life than I once thought possible.

Now I want to make that freedom sustainable, while continuing to do ambitious, meaningful work.

I used to think success meant seeing how big I could make Perfume Playground.

Now I think it means having the freedom to decide what I want it to become.

One thing hasn’t changed, though.

I’ve always believed fragrance can unlock potential.

A memory. A mood. A story. An identity. A connection.

Even an entirely different way of experiencing a person, a brand or a place.

That’s what fascinated me at the beginning.

It still does.

Ten years ago, I sent a box of crystal perfume bottles home from Rajasthan and made a promise to myself.

I had absolutely no idea what keeping that promise would require.

There has been uncertainty, risk, reinvention, exhaustion, joy, motherhood and an enormous amount of learning.

But I’m grateful I followed that instinct.

And perhaps the greatest gift these ten years have given me is the confidence to keep following it, this time with a little more experience and a much clearer understanding of what matters.

Happy 10th birthday, Perfume Playground.

Here’s to whatever we unlock next.

Sam x
Founder & Perfumer
Perfume Playground™