I didn’t set out to build a business. I didn’t have a business plan. In fact, I had nothing, no connections, no capital, not even the right shoes for my first New York winter. What I did have was an unexpected encounter with a giant perfume bottle in a dusty basement 33 years ago. That moment shaped the philosophy behind everything I’ve done since. As I often say, factice is not a commercial artifact—it is memory cast in glass.
Today, I run the only museum in the world dedicated to these oversized perfume bottles. But the journey here was anything but conventional. My business didn’t begin as a business. It began with obsession. With passion. With preservation.
The Bottle That Started It All
When I arrived in the U.S. to pursue my master’s degree, I had no plans to become an entrepreneur. One day, I found a large, strange-looking bottle buried in a basement. I didn’t know what it was, but I couldn’t stop looking at it. I cleaned it every day, studied it and became attached to it. Eventually, I learned it was a factice—a promotional perfume bottle once used by fragrance houses for display.
Back then, I was earning $200 a week, working seven days. And yet, I paid $2,000 for that bottle. People thought I was crazy. But for me, that object carried both physical and emotional weight. It became the first in what is now a collection consisting of over 3,500 pieces.
Creating A Business To Support A Passion
As my collection grew, so did the demands: I needed more money, more space, more storage. That’s how my business was born—from the necessity of growing my collection. I began sourcing and selling discontinued perfumes. It became a way to fund the passion that had taken over my life.
“I didn’t have a plan,” I’ve told people many times. “I just needed more bottles.”
Eventually, that hustle evolved into Eau de Luxe. But even that wasn’t the goal. Business was always in service of the collection, not the other way around.
From Passion To Preservation
At some point, my obsession with collecting transformed into something deeper: a commitment to preservation. These factices were being discarded everywhere. Department stores trashed them during renovations, fragrance houses no longer made them because of the cost. What once stood as symbols of elegance were now being dumped like garbage.
Read the article:
https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2025/05/28/more-than-glass-how-passion-preservation-and-faith-shaped-my-business-philosophy/
