BTS: A SONIC ESCAPE

With all the noise currently surrounding the U.S. presidential election and the Coronavirus pandemic, allow us to share with you a sonic escape. We invite you to check-out our latest curated Spotify playlist. Available below or on Spotify here.

Never before has our generation experienced change and uncertainty at such a scale. While scary and seemingly never-ending, this too shall pass. It is our aim for this month to remind you, reading this, of the temporary nature of these times. Music, just like scent, has the power to transport us to a different time, a different place, a mindful retreat. Whilst today marks ‘Day 1’ of the UK’s second national lockdown, we want this playlist to inspire peace, hope and positivity.

Invest in yourself. You deserve it.

See you on THE 5TH.

H & G

BTS: CREATIVE SUSTAINABLE INTENTIONS

Last month we highlighted our commitment to becoming a leading name within sustainable luxury fragrance. While we covered our practices that work to ensure THE 5TH’s olfactory scent is formulated to be both safe and good for the environment, this month is all about our creative sustainable ideas for: bottle design, packaging and the customer journey.

BOTTLE DESIGN

• Paper stickers and material labels on fragrance bottles are a thing of the past. Over time these accumulate dirt and no longer appear as they were initially designed or intended. This encourages people to buy a completely new bottle once the fragrance has been used and proceed to throw out the old.

• Instead, we are opting to screen-print directly on to the bottle to ensure a clean, minimal and long lasting design. The natural transparency of the glass bottle will also allow your fragrance to blend with the colours of the environment it’s placed within.

• Lastly, we want to create a bold, yet understated and timeless bottle that will fit seamlessly into, and compliment, any room or environment. Even if you don’t opt to refill your bottle with fragrance, we hope you will find alternative creative uses, furthering our ambition to intertwine art, design and fragrance.

PACKAGING

• We aim to ensure the materials and inks used across our packaging is sourced sustainably, biodegradable and non-toxic. It is important we start as we mean to go on and thus intend to invest early in environmentally friendly resources and operations.

• Also, we have decided to step away from the common practice within the luxury fragrance industry of using plastic wrap to complete product packaging. We hope to join those businesses leading the way in re-imagining what it takes to create luxury, simultaneously eliminating unnecessary waste and damage to the environment.

• Our mission to be environmentally sustainable will extend not only to our formula and product packaging, but also to our promotional material and methods, which increasingly are significant sources of excess waste in the current social media/influencer marketing model. Bigger is not always better, and so again, we hope to re-frame what it takes to market a quality product, without contributing to the negative and harmful impact we as a society have already imposed on the natural environment.

A CONSIDERATE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

• One of the first sustainable business strategies we were adamant we wanted to adopt was a bottle refill service. This will allow you to return your empty fragrance bottle to us, to be refilled at a lower price point than it is when buying THE 5TH fragrance for the first time. This enables us to promote the recycling of our materials and reduce waste. Unfortunately for purely logistical reasons and as a small start-up we are unable to offer this service from launch, but encourage all those that buy a fragrance from THE 5TH to keep hold of their bottle, as we hope in the not-too-distant future we will be able to offer our fragrance bottle refill service.

• As THE 5TH grows and we expand our collection of fragrances, we hope to create a ’try-before-you-buy scheme’, offering a discovery set containing small sample bottles of our range of scents for a marginal price, allowing you to explore the scents before committing to the purchase of a full-size bottle. We will then deduct the cost of the discovery set from your next purchase of a full sized bottle. This will enhance your journey with THE 5TH, enabling a full sensory experience, whilst allowing you to be more flexible and economical with your choices. Gifting any spare fragrance samples, that you do not select as your first preference, to friends and family is encouraged (if you can bare to see them go!).

The above creative sustainable intentions in no way form a comprehensive list that allow us to fully meet our objective of being considered a socially responsible brand, but it’s a start. Join us in promoting the idea that a luxury lifestyle and quality product does not have to be synonymous with excess and ignorance to the world we inhabit.

See you on THE 5TH.

H & G

BTS: THE 5TH SAFETY STANDARDS

From conception, THE 5TH has sought to create an all-encompassing design and scent experience, but always with personal safety and social responsibility at the forefront of each and every creative and strategic decision we make. In partnering with a perfumer that shares these same values, we proceed boldly but also with utmost caution and hold ourselves against the strictest fragrance industry standards.

Since 1973, the IFRA (International Fragrance Association) has represented, and fought to regulate, the industry. As a part of their mission to “promote the safe use and enjoyment of fragrances around the world”, the IFRA has developed a system to manage the safe use of fragrance: the IFRA Standards.

Whether natural or synthetic, the IFRA test, assess and monitor the ingredients that go into making fragrances and set the rules that allow for their safe use. With a long-standing, science-based approach, their Standards ban, limit or set criteria for certain ingredients, based on hard evidence and consumer insights. These rules are recognised globally by government authorities and trade bodies and are overseen by independent experts in the field.

The IFRA system is:

For a comprehensive list of rules and for the 49th Amendment of the IFRA Standards, published on 10 January 2020, click here.

For more information, visit https://ifrafragrance.org

THE 5TH pledges to never become complacent in our practices and we will continue to evolve, always researching and evaluating what more can be done to further our mission of bringing the safest, most sustainable experiences in quality fragrance and design. Therefore, our standards and social responsibilities stretch far beyond just the formula of our fragrances. Next month, on October 5, we hope to share our latest ideas regarding bottle design, packaging and the customer journey considerations that together will further our commitment to becoming a leading name within sustainable luxury fragrance.

See you on THE 5TH.

H & G