TikTok-Favorite Small-Batch Perfume Brand Ffern Has A Limited Client Ledger—And 20,000 People Waiting To Get On It

Timed with the summer and winter solstices and spring and fall equinoxes, Ffern sends seasonal perfumes to a limited group of clients on what it calls its ledger. The number of people on the ledger is a closely guarded secret, but the fragrance house divulged it’s surged 300% this year, and there are over 20,000 people on a waiting list to join the coveted group.

The idea for the ledger was borne out of Ffern’s constraints. The company employs natural ingredients to build its perfumes, and their yield and quality can vary from harvest to harvest. To select the best of them sustainably, Owen Mears and Emily Cameron, the siblings behind the brand, concluded each of Ffern’s fragrance could only be produced in small batches.

“From the very beginning, our approach has been, we are obsessed with perfume, and we don’t think anyone else is making it quite right, so we’ve been focused on doing it in our own way,” says Cameron. “We wanted to create a family fragrance house that’s become very much our life. We tend to have tunnel vision, to be honest.”

She adds, “The overarching aim of Ffern [is] to find a way to connect people with nature in a fundamental and interesting way that makes them fall in love with nature again. We see that as our raison d’etre.”

Cameron and Mears’ connection with nature is rooted in their upbringing. They grew up in Somerset, a small village in England renowned for its cheddar cheese and cider that sits on a patch of picturesque countryside with a medieval manor housing a thriving organic herb farm. The organic herb farm’s lavender, rose, cinnamon, cumin, cardamom, saffron and more left an indelible impression on Mears and Cameron.

“Our childhood was this incredibly rich olfactory landscape,” says Mears. “It was a uniquely fragrant space and part of the world. That really characterized our childhood and in a way we almost took that for granted, but, when we left Somerset, I felt that something was certainly missing.”

That olfactory experience-sized hole in Mears’ life ignited an obsession with fragrance. The Oxford University graduate began studying the history of the craft, specifically scents formulated with natural ingredients. The deep dive led him to Joseph Robert, a natural fragrance pioneer active in the late 1800s.

“He discovered and was first to use a process called solvent extraction in perfume,” explains Mears. “Essentially that allowed perfumers to get very strong oils from natural ingredients. Until that point there were a few rudimentary methods that could be used, and they only worked on certain ingredients, and naturals tended to be incredibly expensive and quite weak. With this new method, it opened up the natural perfume’s palettes of ingredients. That was a bit of a golden era for natural perfume.”

When Mears and Cameron were ready to concoct Ffern’s inaugural scent, they met with perfumers Francois Robert and Elodie Durande. They didn’t realize Francois Robert is Joseph Robert’s great grandson until their second conversation with him. Mears recounts, “It was this huge moment. I still sort of shiver when I think about it. That was the moment where there was no going back.”

Ffern introduced its inaugural fragrance on the winter solstice of 2018. With every seasonal release, the customers on its ledger are charged $129 per bottle in advance, and they receive their fragrance without previously smelling it. Ledger members are guaranteed a space on the ledger for as long as Ffern is in existence, but they’re free to leave it at their leisure.

“Because we know we are making and sending these fragrances to people who haven’t tried them before, in the package, it comes with a little sample pack,” says Cameron. “You try the sample first, and if you love it, then you break the seal on the main box, and if not, then you send it back to us, and it’s all completely free and free returns.”

“The overarching aim of Ffern [is] to find a way to connect people with nature in a fundamental and interesting way that makes them fall in love with nature again.”

Ledger membership in the United States has tripled this year. To familiarize American consumers with its concept, Ffern has embarked on a robust social media advertising campaign showcasing ethereal videos and photos. On TikTok, it’s hard to miss the brand. There have been nearly 550 million views on the platform of Ffern Summer 2023.

Off of screens, Ffern is bringing the countryside to city dwellers via its retail location in London’s Soho neighborhood. Opened late last year, the stylish beige oasis features artisanal touches from Somerset and beyond. There’s a seagrass rug, handcrafted pottery and rocks quarried from Somerset like hamstone and fossilized rock. Ffern serves tea in the handcrafted pottery to store visitors.

The centerpiece of the store is the world’s largest mycelium desk made by Magical Mushroom. As normal wear and tear occurs, a new panel of mycelium can be quickly grown to replace it. The shroom panels are supported by wood, rendering the entire structure compostable. In fact, neither the store nor Ffern’s packaging have any plastic.

Cameron describes the space as an “amazing coming together of different makers,” but it isn’t just a place for journalists and Ledger members to meet the makers and purchase fragrances from Ffern’s archive. Craft workshops are run at the shop on topics such as natural fabric dyeing, flower pressing and calligraphy.

“We wanted it to be a retreat like a safe haven in the center of London,” says Meade, expounding that customers can “understand Ffern a little more by entering into this space. We wanted it to have this peaceful serenity, which you obviously get in the Somerset countryside, and you maybe don’t always find in the center of London. It’s also brought us into contact with so many more international customers, which has been really exciting.”

Ffern declined to discuss how much it spent to construct the store, other than to comment that it was a “huge investment.” As Ffern continues to penetrate the U.S. market, its sibling co-founders hint that an East Coast pop-up could be on the horizon. Currently, the brand ships exclusively to the United Kingdom and U.S.

The fragrance category has been a golden child of beauty of late. Prestige fragrance sales reached $7.3 billion in 2022, marking a 52% jump in share of total prestige beauty sales since 2019, according to market research firm Circana, and there’s been eye-popping big-ticket fragrance deals recently (see Kering’s 3.8 billion acquisition of Creed and Puig’s $1 billion pickup of Byredo). While it’s not cheap to operate a sustainable niche luxury fragrance brand, Mears and Cameron remark they don’t pay much attention to what’s happening in the fragrance industry broadly and are bootstrapping Ffern.

Mears says, “We always do the thing you’re probably not supposed to do. When everyone else is closing their shops, that’s when we open one. We’ll carry on being a bit of a maverick, playing by our own tune, but it’s exciting that people see the value in fragrance in the beauty world, and clearly there is so much passion from customers towards it as a staple in their life.”