Terrance Pratt says that his new fragrance brand Memoir is his autobiography in scent. Launched in 2022, Memoir contains pieces of Chicago’s culture, which is Pratt’s adopted hometown by way of Kalamazoo, and also represents his journey.
Pratt recently spoke with ADW to shed light on his new brand and the importance of diversity in the fragrance industry.
Memoir is kind of you like your autobiography. Can you share how you developed a love for fragrances?
My grandfather, interestingly enough, sold Avon fragrances. He was sort of a door to door Avon fragrance sales guy before becoming an entrepreneur. And it was passed down to my father. And so when I was a kid, l would be getting ready for school. At the same time, my dad would be getting ready for work and he had this amazing collection of all of the classic fragrances. He would let me pick from his collection each day for me to spray on. And so I would be really excited to wear those to school each day. Later in life, I found that I always had a pretty nice collection. But around a decade ago, my passion for collecting fragrances went into overdrive and I really took it to another level.
When did you get the initial idea to launch the business?
I got the initial idea about nine years ago. I had started to build such a great collection. I had also started to build a customer base of friends who would have me shop for them. And all of them would say, ‘Man, you have such a great nose for fragrances, you should create your own fragrance.’ I eventually started to look into it and found that there’s so many obstacles to creating a fragrance brand. This is why you don’t see a lot of Black people doing it at a high level. It’s kind of like with fashion. Fragrances are mostly bottled up in France. And so there’s so many barriers to entry. You need multiple vendors all over the world, from Europe to South Africa to the Middle East.
What have you seen in terms of diversity, or the lack thereof?
I haven’t seen a lot of diversity at all. There are a number of Black owned, independent fragrance brands, but there aren’t many really operating at a high level. There’s a guy named Chris Collins who’s killing it. Outside of him, I don’t see anyone else really doing it at that level. When you look at major retailers, you don’t see any Black owned brands there. In the entire supply chain, you don’t see any diversity in there. So I think it’s a hurdle and an opportunity.
Following the launch, what are the next steps?
I’m taking baby steps. What I found with some upstart brands is that scaling too quickly can can hurt you. And so I don’t want to go too slow, but I also don’t want to move too fast. And end with a ton of inventory and, and nowhere to push it. So I think what’s next for me is is a couple of things. One is I’m getting ready to launch my sampling program. And so that’ll give potential customers the opportunity to sample. And then the next big piece after that is to find more stockists because we have a couple of stores that we’re going to launch at in Chicago and one in New York. But I need to have locations in every major city, a place where people can smell it before they buy it.
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