Business students pitch their own perfume after fragrance workshop

Business students at Nescot spent the morning honing their marketing skills today (Thursday, September 27) with a workshop on perfumes.

The Level 2 and Level 3 students learnt about how fragrances are made, how ingredients are costed, and how products are taken to market.

They got to build their own unique perfume, and then worked in teams to pitch a scent to the lecturers and visiting experts from The Perfume Studio, with one group winning a prize.

“It’s a brilliant experience for the students, because they get to really put what they’re learning into practice in real life as well as learning new skills,” said Christina Andreou, Nescot’s Section Leader for Business.

“For example, we’ve been working on concepts like the marketing mix for selling a product. Today the students got to hear from an industry expert about how that applies to perfume in the real world.

“Then they were able to take what they’d just learnt, combine it with their business knowledge, and put it all into practice by marketing a product they’d just created.

“In addition, pitching helped them improve their teamwork, communication and self-confidence, all of which are skills they will need to succeed in business.”

The students learnt about how perfumes are created using top, heart and base notes, how composition affects the finished product, and about the effects of aroma.

During their pitch they were asked to consider how they would develop their product, how they would promote it, where they would sell it, and what their target audience would be.

The winning group, Team 4, won the competition with their perfume Golden Eagle, which they planned to increase sales of by using celebrity endorsement.

“We’ve been very impressed by how hard the students have worked, how creative they’ve been, and how much they’ve applied their business and marketing knowledge,” said Rob Lockwood, Head of Business, Accounting and Travel.

Level 2 student Fabio said he enjoyed the session. “I’m thinking about doing an apprenticeship in digital marketing, so it was interesting to learn about pitching products,” he said.