‘It’s Impossible to Mix the Essences for An Exact Copy of the Original Fragrance’

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For all its faults, Jakarta can be a great city to live in. One of the best things about it is that anything and everything you could possibly want is sure to be on sale in some street stall or at one of the city’s many shopping malls.

If you’re on the hunt for some knockoff perfume, Wisnu is a good person to know. The 26-year-old mixes perfume essences, and for a low price he can whip you up a pretty good facsimile of the latest hot fragrance. With his bargain offers, pay him a visit and you’ll come out smelling like a rose in more ways than one.

Today, Wisnu tells My Jakarta how he got his nose for scents, how to tell the difference between original and knockoff products, what a prayer fragrance is and how some of his attempts to mix up completely unique perfumes have ended in disaster.

How do you tell the difference between an original perfume and a knockoff?

Instincts. Once you’ve been in the business for long, enough you’ll know what I mean. I have sampled a lot of fragrances, so it only takes me about two seconds to tell if a perfume is original or not. You will find that the imitation fragrances are a little bit too sharp, plus they usually feel a bit warmer on your skin. Some of the better imitation perfumes can last as long as the original ones, but they’re still lower quality.

What kind of people come to you for perfume?

My customers range from teenagers to middle-aged men and women. I’ve been getting a lot of teenagers recently. They’re aware of the trends and which perfumes are popular, but they don’t have enough money to buy the original fragrance, so they ask me to concoct a perfume that smells pretty much like the original one.

I’ll be honest, it’s impossible to mix the perfume essences to get an exact copy of the original fragrance. The best I can do is make it very similar, but not necessarily the same.

Do your customers prefer using branded bottles or the generic spray tubes?

It depends. The first time they come to my shop, they don’t bring anything. They usually just tell me the type of fragrance or the perfume brand they want. Once the perfume is done, I usually ask them if they want to buy an empty branded perfume bottle as the container, which they usually accept. After that, once they run out, they come back and bring the bottle to refill.

Considering the wide range of fragrances out there, where did you learn to mix the essences to get a specific fragrance?

There’s really no secret. People are just usually good at what they do every day. For me, I picked this up from my older brother, who got into using self-concocted scents before me. He joined a community of perfume-essence mixers in Jakarta and learned to do it with them. He also met a lot of people who supplied the essences to Indonesia from abroad.

I later joined the community and I’m still active in it. I learn a lot from other perfume mixers, especially different techniques. Sometimes during our gatherings we practice new mixtures to learn how they smell. For me, that kind of learning is much more effective than reading textbooks or talking about the theories of mixing perfume essences.

Have you ever made a special scent just for yourself or someone in your family?

Yes, I have. Some of them were disasters [laughs], but some were quite good. But after two or three months, I just decided to use branded fragrances because the smell is more popular. Most people who come to my shop for the first time ask for an original fragrance, but eventually most of them will just ask me to copy their favorite perfume.

How much do you charge for the perfumes you sell?

I charge customers based on the volume of the perfume they buy, with no additional cost for the mixing. The price ranges from Rp 1,500 to Rp 15,000 [15 cents to $1.65] a milliliter, and you can buy between 5 and 100 milliliters. The cheapest one has a strong fragrance but does not last long, three hours at most. It also feels a bit hot on your skin. The most expensive ones are usually used by people for sholat, the Islamic prayers. It feels good on your skin and has a mild yet long-lasting fragrance. Most of those sholat perfumes are imported by big suppliers in Surabaya from Arab countries.

Overall, for just Rp 2,500 a milliliter you can get an average-quality perfume that will last from six to seven hours and does not smell too strong.

Have you ever had any customers come back and complain that your perfume gave them a rash?

Thank God, so far no customers have complained about any side effects from my products. I also always try to keep an eye on the quality of the essences that I buy from the suppliers. Anyway, for the long term, I would suggest that people don’t buy perfume essences that are too cheap. They feel a bit hot on your skin and I worry that one day they could damage your skin.

Wisnu was talking to Carlos Situmeang.

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