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In 2017, brother-sister duo Martijn and Floor van Rooy founded Parfumado, a perfume subscription service. They believed in the power of scents to evoke emotions and bring memories to life. However, few options were available to personalize the experience of wearing different scents for various occasions and seasons.
The multi-billion dollar perfume market grows and diversifies each year. Parfumado’s sample service was created to lower the threshold for accessing these products while making the perfume shopping experience enjoyable, simple, and personalized. Despite this vision, Parfumado faced challenges with its previous technology setup.
Initially, Parfumado's platform was built using a custom back end on top of Shopify to support a unique subscription model. When Parfumado ran into issues with customization and scalability, the merchant started looking for alternatives.
"We didn't want to solve all the subscription logic challenges ourselves, even though we had specific needs," explains Jesse Tan, Technical Director at Parfumado. "We didn’t want to be burdened with all the nitty-gritty details of doing recurring orders."
That’s where Firmhouse came in. Parfumado was particularly interested in the API-first integration of our recurring commerce platform. With flexible architecture, Parfumado could connect its newly built front and back end, allowing full control over the customer experience.
"Firmhouse handles many other aspects for us that we do not want to fully customize,” shares Jesse. “It provides an easy-to-use portal for our internal use with customer orders and payment history and abstracts away the details of the payment provider."
Like many merchants offering subscriptions, Parfumado fulfills orders on a recurring basis. However, each bottle of perfume contains a different fragrance, which, Jesse says, transforms the service into a discovery platform. Customers are not just receiving products; they are embarking on a journey to explore and discover new scents each month.
"We can maintain our own brand identity and be a little bit headstrong or quirky about it,” says Jesse. “We want it like this, it needs to be like that, and Firmhouse gives us more freedom to be creative than other parties.”
When customers sign up for a Parfumado subscription, powered by Firmhouse, they receive a new 8ml perfume each month. This bottle is enough for 30 days, or four sprays per day.
Parfumado loves to introduce people to niche and exclusive fragrances. These products are often more expensive to source or have a lower profit margin.
"Today, you're not the same person you were last week and you won’t be the same next week,” says Jesse. “When you want something new to match how you feel in a specific moment, you don't want 20 bottles that are €200 each.”
With Firmhouse, the merchant can add a surcharge for premium perfumes to make it economically feasible.
In addition to surcharges, Firmhouse enables Parfumado to add a discount for prepaid subscriptions. Customers can enjoy savings when they sign up for a six or 12-month subscription, or when they upgrade from a monthly plan.
"For us, it's the benefit that we have a guaranteed income,” says Jesse. “We have cash in hand now and a guaranteed customer for several months.”
This flexibility makes it easier for people to shift seamlessly between different options instead of canceling their subscriptions altogether.
Firmhouse has also streamlined the dunning process for unpaid invoices. Often, merchants are tied to a particular setup that only allows them to send payment reminders at pre-set intervals. Additionally, they can’t always tailor the email aesthetically to their specific preferences.
"We are super adamant about maintaining our visual identity and our brand, which is why we want full control of the email look and feel.”
For Parfumado, it is important not to be forced to use a cookie-cutter email, login method, or order history for the customer.
Parfumado is a direct-to-consumer merchant with enthusiastic customers. People will immediately notify the merchant if a product hasn’t shipped, the wrong order has been received, or they believe they are paying too much for a fragrance. With Firmhouse, Parfumado can receive instant feedback and immediately deal with any issues that arise.
Parfumado had a partnership with Jade Anna van Vliet, a Dutch influencer with a younger audience.
“If you signed up and chose the collaboration perfume, you would get a travel case in a specific color,” shares Jesse. “We only had a limited amount and had never had the issue where our infrastructure or website couldn't cope with the inflow of users.”
The merchant didn’t anticipate the impact this would have as people flocked to the website and log-in portal. Firmhouse quickly resolved the capacity issue and got everything working again. Together, Parfumado and Firmhouse have been aligned on providing people with the best user experience.
“As a partner, Firmhouse helps us solve many of our business problems by providing a ready-made solution,” shares Jesse. “ We prefer vendors with a similar creative, original, and quality-driven mindset as us, not just the cheapest ones or the incumbents."
"Firmhouse gives us the freedom to be ourselves and the brand we want to be,” says Jesse. “That’s a reflection of how we approach our customers. We want them to feel good about themselves, find something that really speaks to them, and makes them feel confident about their own person.”
