Spanning the globe once again, your intrepid Essencional reporter has made an exceptional discovery in India where avid fragrance lover and collector, Mr. Shishir Mehta, has founded SCENTIDO Niche Perfumery, the premiere experiential niche fragrance destination in India. Leaving the metallurgical engineering field, where he had been heading a testing laboratory for 35 years, Mr. Mehta pivoted to his passion and his long standing love of rare and exclusive niche fragrances, deciding that the time was right to bring these treasures to the Indian consumer. In this exclusive interview with SCENTIDO Marketing Manager Surabhi Popli we’ll explore the story behind this retailer in a market slated for exponential growth in the years to come.

Are we celebrating — or just consuming?

From Amazon’s Prime Day to China’s Singles’ Day and the global takeover of Black Friday, today’s biggest “holidays” weren’t born from tradition — they were built by marketing.

In this month’s editorial, our Content Director, Karen Marin, explores how marketers have transformed shopping into celebration, how these events have reshaped global consumer habits, and why it may be time to rethink what we’re really celebrating.

Serendipity, according to the Oxford dictionary, means “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way”. Alexandre Helwani could say serendipity has played a part in launching his career, making a rising star of this dynamic, under-30 perfumer. From high school afternoons spent learning about raw materials in the bazar of Dubai, to college days in Paris, funded by selling incense to churches, here’s a man with an atypical background where doors opened through chance encounters. Having trained in the old artisanal style from master to apprentice, his fresh approach is continuously being refined with each new challenging project that comes his way. I caught up with Alexandre in between tradeshows and projects so he could give me the rest of his story.