A twelfth edition with a high rate of innovation for the international Artistic Perfumery event
Esxence – The Art Perfumery Event, the benchmark appointment for Artistic Perfumery at global level, is now preparing its twelfth edition, to be held from 15 to 18 June 2022 and for the first time in the design venue of MiCo, the Milano Convention Centre, the throbbing heart of the CityLife District. The exclusive showcase for the world’s finest artistic production, the event is ready to face new challenges and welcome the international community of business operatives and enthusiasts in the name of the most authentic, sophisticated olfactory culture.
There will be countless new features, staring with a substantial participation of brands, more than 260 of them and some of them new entries, coming from Japan, Australia, Argentina, Hungary and Hong Kong.
The Esxence app, available on your smartphone from May, will provide you with all useful information, such as the map of the exhibition space, the agenda, the calendar of conferences, the list of brands, news and press releases for business operatives and aficionados.
And there’s more: an original exhibition, created in partnership with the IFF and set up along the visitor route through the event. “Fleeting – Scents in Colour” is an excerpt from the exhibition with the same title held in the Mauritshuis Museum in the Hague. Using pedal-operated scent dispensers located under each painting – the ones on show here are faithful reproductions – visitors will be able to smell the scents and perfumes of the seventeenth-century landscapes depicted in each work. The aim is to explore works of art not only visually, but also from a new olfactory perspective.
The excellence of Artistic Perfumery will be represented by the perfumery houses, both the well-established ones and newcomers. The brands are selected by the Technical Committee, made up of experts of international renown, who decide on the basis of the quality of the proposals they receive and of criteria of distribution. This ensures that Esxence is in a position to offer its audience only the best of original production, confirming Milan’s place as the world’s benchmark in this sector. In the more than 7,000 square metres of the MiCo, together with the Main Brands, the public of operatives, distributors, buyers and fans will also find the Spotlights, the sector’s up-and-coming new names. The majority of these (about 70%) come from abroad, a trend that confirms the role played by Esxence as a prestigious setting for launching a name on the international scene.
The concept chosen for this new edition of Esxence, which will accompany visitors on their voyage of discovery of the priceless treasures of artistic perfumery, is “Through The Mirror”, which translates into beauty, singularity, awareness, intimacy and conscience. That mirror will be the characteristic feature this year, enabling us all to see the many different facets of reality and offering us a pathway through, to go exploring new worlds, such as the world of artistic perfumery and of art. Seen through this mirror, perfume is the reflection of our personality, capable of narrating our profoundest being, our very essence. But, at the same time, it can also reflect our most hidden, mysterious sides, sides that we have never yet revealed to anyone: who we are and who we would like to be.
At world level, the share of artistic perfumery on the global beauty market is still less than 2%, but its share in the area of alcohol-based perfumery is increasing all the time, touching points that average around 10% in many countries. In the Italian market, which certainly has the longest record of specific activity in the sector, It has reached important levels. In 2021, the volume of the turnover in artistic perfumery in Italy is estimated to have been approximately €270 million, corresponding to 2.8% of the Italian beauty business in the domestic market, to 14.2% of turnover in the perfume shop channel and to 30.6% of sales of fragrances. Niche perfumery is in the midst of a rapid, radical transformation, one that is so profound that it is even impacting on how it is called: the preference today, in fact, it to describe it as “artistic and research” perfumery.
We are really pleased to be able to present the twelfth edition of Esxence, after the obligatory pause caused by the pandemic
states Silvio Levi, co-founder of the event and Director of the Essencional Study Centre
because it will furnish evidence of the sector’s extreme vitality, proved by the quality of a range accurately selected by the Technical Committee. We are witnessing a veritable Renaissance for Artistic Perfumery, with a considerable increase in the numbers of international and Italian brands that have applied to take part in the event. Attention has been returning in recent years to the importance of our sense of smell and people have rediscovered the fundamental role it plays in the everyday experience of individual wellness. As the Essencional Study Centre, we have worked together with Esxence on the activities of workshops and analyses and in recent months we have noticed how consumers have not only not reduced their use of perfumes, which hold the promise of escapism and emotion, but have also developed a desire to experiment, as we explained in the survey we published last year, entitled Artistic Perfumery and Pandemic. The natural continuation of the activities undertaken during the periods of lockdown is this rich agenda of events that we have put together with Esxence for this edition
Every year, as a result of a painstaking process of research and selection, we are in a position to offer our audience only the finest examples of artistic perfumery production
states Maurizio Cavezzali, co-founder of Esxence and Managing Director of Equipe Exibit
Esxence is the benchmark event at world level: this is where the sector’s most important strategic players meet; this is where trends are decided and here is where the most promising up-and-coming brands make their débuts. In one edition after another, we concentrate our efforts on renewal and innovation, building on our past experiences and analysing the most representative future trends. This is demonstrated by the major new features we are introducing this year, which we have been encouraging energetically: the international vocation of Esxence which, with the support of the Italian Trade Agency ICE and other partners, will facilitate strategic contacts between the sector’s business operatives from the various countries attending, the “Fleeting – Scents in Colour” exhibition and the new app for our visitors. I am sure that this year’s edition will be hugely successful and bring us new stimuli for growth
THE EXPERIENCE LAB
The MiCo will be hosting the Experience Lab, the benchmark event in Italy for excellence in niche beauty and the first Italian event open to the sector’s business operatives and to the general public, that forges connections between unique brands, selected on the basis of their excellence in their niche of reference, and business operatives in the international perfumery and beauty industry.
Now in its second edition, the event sets out to guide industry professionals and visitors to the spaces where they will find unique, up-and-coming and state-of-the-art brands that offer them experiences, discoveries and material for learning.
The stars of this happening are more than 60 exhibitors from all over the world, who will be presenting their new launches in relation to products belonging to the categories of skincare, sun care, oral care, make-up, grooming, baby care, bath & body, home beauty, lifestyle and beauty tools.
Featuring a high quality and a pronounced contemporary atmosphere, this new edition aims to search out those niche situations that have the potential to interpret the needs of today’s increasingly well-informed, evolved and aware consumers. During the event, the conference room will be hosting a series of workshops and talks with industry experts, who will enrich the Experience Lab agenda with important contents.
THE ESXENCE AGENDA OF EVENTS
As in every year, Esxence continues pursuing its aim to promote olfactory culture, offering its audience of professionals and aficionados a rich agenda of meetings, round tables, workshops, presentations and olfactory itineraries, featuring the presence of international experts, scholars and researchers, including Michael Edwards, author of Fragrances of the World, the world encyclopaedia of fragrances, and the anthropologist, historian and expert of perfumes Annick Le Guérer. The meetings are being held in partnership with Essencional, the Study Centre for Artistic Perfumery.
The agenda will open with an update to our web analysis, whose purpose is to monitor research projects, conversations and keywords about artistic perfumery, but also to check what perception of the identity of artistic perfumery consumers form in their minds, how it is evolving in the various international markets and what trends are at work in this specific sector.
The main issues to be tackled during these meetings are: the analysis and the opportunities of export markets of major importance at the moment, such as Africa and China; the value of the digital world in artistic perfumery; the evolution of the creative role played by perfumiers, in a round table featuring four of the world’s leading noses, and sustainability as a vital issue in the artistic perfumery production chain.
Once again, this twelfth edition of Esxence will be able to count on several high-level partnerships, such as the Osmothèque, the world’s only and exclusive International Conservatory of perfumes, and Mouillettes & Co., a well-known Italian organisation that provides training courses and consultancy related to the olfactory sense.
Every date in this events calendar is completely free of charge and the conference hall will be open to the public throughout the days of the event.
We would like to thank Business France, the French national agency whose remit is to internationalise the French economy, for its consistent support of Esxence over the years.
For further information, go to: www.esxence.com
With the patronage of: Region of Lombardy, Municipality of Milan
With the support of: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, Italian Trade Agency – ICE
Sponsors: CFF Creative Flavour Fragrances | Grafiche Edicta | Les Parfumables |
Partner: Business France
Content Partners: Osmothèque | Mouillettes & Co.
Strategic Partner: Essencional
The Essencional Study Centre was founded by Silvio Levi in 2019 for the purpose of contributing to research and development in the sector of Artistic Perfumery and as the natural evolution of the workshops held at Esxence.
In 2019, the Study Centre published Whispers about Artistic Perfumery, a study of the online perception of Artistic Perfumery deriving from an activity of listening to the web at global level and from a survey conducted within the Esxence community.
Essencional launched its own website www.essencional.com in 2021, to publish original content such as interviews with brands, noses and other leading figures and in-depth articles exploring issues of artistic perfumery, offering a service as an observatory for the sector and republishing articles from other websites identified as authoritative by a board of advisors. Every week, the Essencional newsletter offers the best of available content about artistic perfumery, targeting it at professionals and enthusiasts.
In the course of 2021, Essencional curated several important webinars in the Esxence on Air online event, including “International View on Artistic Perfumery: Focus China, Middle East, USA”, “Artistic Perfumery in the Digital World” and “Artistic Perfumery and Pandemic”. Essencional is assisted by an advisory board of Italian and international professionals.
Since 2019, Essencional has partnered with Esxence in defining the agenda of events taking place during the fair.
Entry free of charge, subject to registration on www.esxence.com
Open to business operatives all four days of the event
Open to non-business visitors on Friday and Saturday
Opening hours: from Wednesday to Friday from 10.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. – (last admission at 6.00 p.m.)
Saturday from 10.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. – (last admission at 4.00 p.m.)
