Saudi perfumer aims for uniqueness and originality

A Saudi perfumer made her childhood dream come true and started her own brand, Teebal Eter, after returning home from a six-year educational stint in the US.

Hadeel Bogari told Arab News that creating perfumes was a “God-given” skill.

“Designing perfumes was something in me since I was a very young girl. When I was in high school I remember that I used to mix perfumes and I always had this unique scent — people would know where I was because of the scent I was wearing. This wasn’t something people were used to,” she said. Her father recognized her talent and started introducing her to local suppliers that provided the raw material, which allowed her to mix perfumes. “At university I needed to make a business model about something that I was passionate about, and I made a perfume business model,” she added. She made a vanilla perfume that was sold at the campus store of Dar Al-Hekma University, where she studied for a year.

As every business needs to go through hardships to emerge as successful, Bogari said that she was unaware of many things, such as preparing legal documents and marketing products.

“Fortunately, there was a bazaar that took place during Ramadan at the Hilton and I used to participate in it. A lot of people tried my perfumes and liked them,” she said.

The brand has six types of bases and each base has a variety of perfumes: Oud, musk, vanilla, baby powder, floral and fruity. Bogari offers her suggestions on what kind of scents clients might prefer in order to create perfectly customized scents.

She designed the perfumes herself, and each is unique. “There is no doubt in the quality of the products. I sell two types of perfumes — the concentrated, to which I don’t add anything, and the eau de parfum.”

On the latter, she added: “I was not too keen on joining the spray perfume trend but a lot of customers said that they would love to spray my perfumes and that pushed me to do something that my clients want.”

She said that her biggest achievement was her ability to sell her perfumes in local stores while keeping quality consistent, adding that people know her by the outstanding quality and longevity of her perfumes. Currently, Bogari is showcasing her products in Crate, Homegrown Market and Bazaar, with plans for her own store in the pipeline.