Hello Fragrance Lover! My name is Itua, but for the purpose of my perfume story, call me JSAQ (pronounced; jay-sak) - I am the Founder and the Nose behind Apothecary of the EIGHT, which includes brands like Geicher, Gods of Our Fathers and more.

My perfume journey has been a very interesting one. Like many of you, I grew up with parents who wore classic perfumes like Chanel No. 5, Kouros, Obsession by Calvin Klein and the odd selection of niche fragrances. I would go to my parent’s dressers and marvel at the sheer number of fragrances they each had, each one battling for the title of ‘scent supreme’ on the kind of product-filled dresser I wished to have one day.

I spent much of my youth loving but not truly understanding perfumes as products, but I very much respected the brands that brought these magnificent expressions of olfactive decadence and simplicity to us.

I began my journey into the world of perfumes with my first proper purchase being A*men by Thierry Mugler. A few purchases later, I was at Harrods in London and get introduced to the fragrance, “Vetiver Tonka” by Hermes. My life chaged in that moment. I went on a bender of sorts and researched other fragrances and began purchasing anything I could afford at the time. I studied the notes, studied the performance and shared my new-found knowledge with anyone who was either willing or not willing to listen. I also very quickly became the go-to person to help with fragrance purchases that really helped one make a personal statement with their scent or one looking for the perfect perfume to gift a loved one. I dreamed of one day launching my own fragrances and as far back as 2005, I had begun designing what I thought would be my ideal perfume bottle.

In 2009, I was at London Fashion Week. I had arrived at Somerset House earlier than my celebrity client and decided to have a look at the presentations and smaller exhibitors who had taken up stands inside the building. While walking through, I was approached by Alexandra Soveral, a famed cosmetic designer and aromatherapist, who was hosting a perfume creation competition that week. I had no idea who she was, and I very quickly turned down her invitation to create a perfume and win a prize. In the course of an hour minutes, she approached me three times, and on the fourth approach, I gave in. I was given a selection of thirty ingredients, out of which I could only choose three to form a top note, middle note and base note. I let my spirit guide me and when I was through, I was told I had a good chance of winning. Although I loved what I created, I didn’t see how it would win. I took a scent strip home to share with my brothers and they absolutely loved it.

A week later, it had been announced in the newspapers that I had won the competition! This moment made it even clearer to me that I would one day work to have my own brand.

Fast-forward to 2012, I had put my perfume dreams on the backburner and began working as a strategy consultant, servicing clients across both FMCG and Luxury spaces. At this time, “omni-channel” was slowly becoming a buzzword in the fashion industry and across luxury retail, and I was very keen on being a big player in shaping the future of luxury retail. I came up with an idea for a digital landscape with its own currency where luxury retailers, entertainers and other businesses could build communities, sell product and amass digital real estate. One of the big goals of this, for me, was finding a way to eliminate a lot of the bias that continues to plague the luxury retail market to this day, particularly when it comes to dealing with people of colour at the physical transaction level. I had no background in tech or coding, but I had watched so many panel discussions with Sillicon Valley entrepreneurs that I was convinced a flight to San Francisco would lead me to the right people to help develop this concept. I had already begun paying a website developer to create a space with some of the key functions that would lean into my desire for the digital landscape. It was going to be the future of commercial and even personal interactions and I was excited with its prospects. About two years went by, a whole lot of my personal finances had been sunk into the project and I saw no true progress, so I shelved the project.

This is where it gets interesting. The concept for my digital landscape was framed on eight island-cities that were creative to portray the personality of the people who would ‘live’ and shop there. It was based on the aesthetics of existing luxury brands, consumer personality profiles, real destinations I found fascinating and even age demographics and music preferences.

These island-cities were named Borgan Bay, Bosch, Grand-Olang, Grand-Peru, Madabi, Manakai, Najjar and Pacific-Assai.

In 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, I decided to focus on creating perfumes and building a business and a brand. I didn’t have to think too hard and far when it occurred to me that I could take the personality concepts and all the research I had done around the digital landscape and turn it into the layout for eight fragrances that would come to define the Geicher brand.

I developed an acute level issue with my sinuses which means that about I am mostly unable to smell. Because of this, I create my fragrance formulations relying almost entriely on an interesting combination of written stories, personality profiles and music. Each of my scents has a soundtrack, a playlist of songs that collectively best describe the complexity of emotions I felt during the entire process and an album I repeatedly listened to from top to bottom during the phase of creating and blending my accords. The result is the olfactive magic that is captured in each bottle of perfume that goes out to the world.

As for the name Geicher, I came up with it in 2006 when a dear friend, Frederik Ferrier and I were dreaming about what future success would look like and what name people would know us by. The name has a meaning, but no direct English translation.