A record number of over 9,000 visitors flocked to the world’s most important international event dedicated to Artistic Perfumery

Esxence – The Art Perfumery Event, the world’s first artistic perfumery event, celebrates Milan as the world capital for doing business in this sector and for discovering its new trends.

This year was hugely successful, as a record number of 9,200 visitors attended from all over the world to view a selected range of more than 280 brands and take part in a rich calendar of events and meetings open to the public. From 15 to 18 June, the event showcased the very best that the sector has to offer to a public of buyers, retailers, distributors, professionals and aficionados who come together every year in Milan in the name of the most authentic and sophisticated olfactory culture, contributing with their presence to the aim that Esxence has pursued since its very first edition.

Large numbers also took part in the second edition of the Experience Lab, Italy’s first event dedicated to niche beauty, which hosted 66 of the most innovative brands on the international scene in the spaces at the MiCo.

THIS EDITION IN NUMBERS

– Esxence: 281 exhibitor brands (+25% on the previous edition in 2019), of which 108 Main Brands and 173 Spotlight Brands

– Experience Lab: 66 exhibitor brands

– 31 countries of origin of the brands (including some new entries: Japan, Australia, Argentina, Hungary and Hong Kong)

– 8,000 square metres of exhibition space

– 70% of all exhibitors came from abroad

– 9,200 visitors

– 70% of all visitors were professionals

– 25 conferences and meetings listed in the calendar of events at Esxence, all open to the public of enthusiasts and to specialised operatives for the first three days of the event, which were attended by some of the most authoritative names in the sector at world level.

Every year, as a result of a painstaking process of research and selection, we 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 by analysing future trends. This is demonstrated by the major new features we introduced this year, the substantial participation of brands, some of them new entries, the original exhibition created in partnership with the IFF and set up along the visitor route through the event, “Fleeting – Scents in Colour”, an excerpt from the exhibition with the same title held in the Mauritshuis Museum in the Hague, and the Esxence App, containing all the information about the event

In addition, Esxence also hosted the official presentation of IPI – the Italian Perfumery Institute, devised by Equipe International as the fruit of the experience gained in 12 years of Esxence. The purpose of IPI is to offer courses and modules for learning, studying and developing knowledge, so as to enhance the value of Italian Artistic Perfumery’s great historical tradition.

This edition furnished very clear confirmation of the fundamental role that has been played by Esxence over the years at international level

states Silvio Levi, co-founder of the event and Director of the Essencional Study Centre, who partnered with the Equipe Exibit team to curate and co-ordinate the entire programme of presentations and lectures.

We have certainly supported and nourished the sector, also during the most complex periods of lock-down and isolation, succeeding in bouncing back with an event that has substantiated the Renaissance of a sector, one that has proved its credentials of dynamism, courage and enterprise, offering us a self-evident capacity to react, driven by the burning passion that has generated so many new ideas and so much fantastic creativity. I was particularly pleased to witness a clear acknowledgement of our role as important protagonists in the beauty industry and to observe the excellent level of attendance at our workshops as they tackled issues of primary relevance for the sector’s development, in terms not only of business, but also and more significantly of knowledge, creativity and a better understanding of the value of olfactory communication

The concept chosen for this twelfth edition of Esxence was “Through The Mirror”, which translates into beauty, singularity, awareness, intimacy and conscience. That mirror was 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.

Seen from an institutional perspective, this year we had the support of a very important partner: ITA – the Italian Trade Agency (ICE), whose significance is strategic, because it is helping us achieve the process of internationalising Esxence on which we have been working for the last year, with the aim of promoting Italian firms in the sector in key international markets.

Esxence is the place where artistic perfumery shares its energy and inspirations: it is the place where ideas come together, meet and get exchanged, but it is also a favourite place for doing business.

The impact of Artistic Perfumery on the global beauty market is still less than 2% at world level, but its impact on alcohol-based perfumery as a whole is increasing steadily, achieving figures that on average account for some 10% of the market in many countries. In the Italian market, which can certainly boast the longest specific activity in the field, artistic perfumery has achieved some important milestones. In fact, the volume of the artistic perfumery turnover in Italy in 2021 has been estimated at approximately €270 million, which corresponds to 2.8% of the entire Italian beauty business in the domestic market, to 14.2% of the entire turnover of the perfume shop retail channel and to 30.6% of all fragrancy sales. What was once “niche” perfumery is well on the way to a transformation as radical as it is rapid and so profound as even to change the way we talk about it. In fact, these days we prefer to call it “artistic and research” perfumery.

Once again, this twelfth edition of Esxence was 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.

Our thanks are due to Business France, the French National Agency at the service of the internationalisation of the French economy, which has flanked Esxence for years.

For further information: www.esxence.com

With the patronage of: the Region of Lombardy, Municipality of Milan

With the support of: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation and of ICE, the Italian Trade Agency

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 2020, 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 additional, Essencional benefits from the partnership of an advisory board of Italian and international professionals.

Essencional curated several workshops for the 2022 edition of Esxence, including: “2022 Essencional Observatory: Economic Trends and the State of Artistic Perfumery in the Digital Space”, “Talk with Perfumers: decoding the 2022 Complex World of Perfumery”, “International View about Artistic Perfumery: Africa”, “Promoting Artisan Fragrance in a Digital World” and “Scenting Space: How Scents can create Memorable Events”.