Anyone interested in perfume today, or even just looking to buy a new scent, will stumble upon the word "niche" within three seconds. For some, it's a seal of quality; for others, it has long been a trench war. But what does "niche" actually mean today? Who is unfairly adorning themselves with the label - and how much does the term still convey? The longer one delves into it, the more diffuse it becomes.

Yet, it was once comparatively simple: Niche originally referred to an alternative distribution channel for independent brands that did not belong to one of the large cosmetic corporations like Lauder, L'Oréal, or Coty. Fuelled by internet forums and blogs, this sales reality quickly evolved. Necessity became a virtue, and "niche" became the common demarcation from the mainstream, which until the early 2000s was primarily found in chains, department stores, and traditional perfumeries. Niche became synonymous with quality - for small, owner-managed brands, artistic aspiration, and rarity. Really?

That is long gone - if it was ever so clear what was niche and what was mainstream. Even then, Andy Tauer stood next to Acqua di Parma, Byredo next to Hiram Green in my shop. Not by chance, but because I had a concept and a vision for my shop: Selected Luxury. Today, demand increasingly dictates which brands make it onto the shelf. A hype online is often enough to turn visibility into desirability - and desirability sooner or later ends up in the assortment. One of my criteria used to be, for example, exclusivity within a 200-kilometer radius. Today, a brand can be sold exclusively and still be present everywhere - a single online shop and five high-reach TikTokers are enough.

This is precisely where the next paradox begins: what is a success for the brand quickly becomes a flaw for collectors, connoisseurs, and snobs. As soon as a fragrance goes viral and suddenly everyone knows it - or at least unmistakably wears it - the question arises whether this brand can still be "true niche." When every content creator has been supplied with a sample bottle and has given their two cents, an unspoken niche purity law reliably comes into play within the opinionated community - usually with a devastating verdict: too well-known, too commercial, too hyped, too mainstream compatible. In short: mainstream and not niche. That sounds like betrayal. But who decides that?

Niche has long been a marketing concept and a pricing strategy anyway. Only niche brands are excused for a crooked cardboard box with a leaky spray head. If a fragrance goes viral, retailers can hardly avoid stocking the brand - because customers explicitly ask for that fragrance, and only that one. In this respect, viral fragrances certainly generate frequency, but they hardly shape a profile. Apart from the investment for an entire brand: the retailer cannot simply buy that one bottle. Best example: Aventus by Creed carried the entire brand for a long time - yet the retailer still has to take the entire range. Social media hypes are therefore a double-edged sword for retailers. The retailer becomes a showroom, because the purchasing decision is made elsewhere. And the eager consumer? They often demonstratively reject expert advice, because Sven Aroma and Mandy Musk have already said everything relevant about sillage, performance, and compliment-getters. But the roles are no longer clearly distributed anyway. Creators become retailers, retailers become content producers - and suddenly it's hardly possible to cleanly separate what is advice, what is recommendation, and what is already advertising. So who still decides what niche is? The brand? The retailer? The influencer? The algorithm? The consumer? My thesis: A brand can position itself, trade can segment - but the actual attribution is created online today. There, "niche" is no longer a category, but a cultural code. You don't just wear perfume, you are a "niche fragrance lover," "fraghead," or even a "niche snob." "Niche" functions as a signal of competence - but the word says nothing about the quality of a perfume.

The idea that niche perfumery emerges in a particularly free, artistic parallel world also hardly holds up. Most perfumers come from the same professional structures, work with the same fragrance houses and raw material suppliers - even those who later found their own brand and work very independently. Alessandro Gualtieri is a good example of this: Nasomatto appears maximally auteur-like, but here too, a professional industry background is at the beginning and a product that must be developed and sold within economic limits is at the end. The same applies to Francis Kurkdjian: his talent does not change with the price tag, but briefing, budget, target group, and raw material scope do. Niche is therefore not a separate school of perfumery. And the perfumer is not automatically a free artist either. He can experiment, provoke, and have a strong signature - but he works with material, costs, production reality, and a market. Art is in the museum. Perfume is on the sales shelf. Great perfumery is highly developed craftsmanship - and at the same time a product that is developed, calculated, and produced because it is intended to be sold. Niche fans in particular tend to suppress this banal economic connection. Until a brand becomes too successful. Then growth easily becomes betrayal - and disappointment becomes sanction: unfollowing, calls for boycotts, public shaming, a collective "dead to me." Cancel culture - often not because of a moral misstep, but because of too much success. The brand has not behaved wrongly. It has merely become too big.

So who is the actual niche traitor? The brand that wanted to grow? The retailer who wants to sell to keep his store running? The influencer who needs a competence signal to be heard? Or the customer who created an image of a parallel world that never existed, and is now disappointed that reality doesn't play along? Perhaps the question is framed incorrectly. Only someone who has made a promise can betray. However, no brand, no retailer, no perfumer has ever signed a contract to remain forever small, unsellable, and inconvenient. Others have interpreted this into it - and then apparently feel personally betrayed because not everyone adheres to it. The niche is not abolishing itself by doing this. The word is too useful, too convenient, and too deeply rooted in the industry's vocabulary for that. It is merely becoming increasingly devoid of content: a label that can be stuck on any price tag and therefore ultimately no longer designates anything. Not dead. Just superfluous.