Niche fragrance · Europe
We distribute a complementary portfolio of niche brands in Europe and place them with one serious retailer per city. Brands keep control of their map. Shops keep an exclusive they can actually sell.
Support, digital services, PR and B2C fulfilment come with the partnership — not after it.
About us
Strictly Selective Distribution has spent sixteen years building brands in Europe. Matthias Janke founded it after a decade at L’Oréal in Germany and Russia: built for brands that should not be everywhere, and for retailers who need more than another listing.
We represent a selected portfolio of niche fragrance, chosen so the brands stand next to one another without cancelling each other out. We work across the European Union, from Scandinavia and the Baltics to Central Europe and the Balkans. We do not operate in the UK.
We are not a catalogue wholesaler. Distribution is limited on purpose — to the doors that can carry a brand, with exclusivity protected city by city. Where a brand enters a country for the first time, we map it: the data, the potential, and a route in that does not flood the territory.
Selection is the method, but placement is only half the work. A finished product needs a market: a position, a partner network, and a presence that reads as a brand rather than as stock.
That presence is planned country by country. We build the communication strategy for each market — how a brand is introduced, to whom and in which context — and we represent it at the trade shows that matter there. One voice, from the first conversation to the counter.
That is the difference between placing units and building a name. We stay close to both sides of the counter, the brand that made the scent and the retailer who has to live with it, so that distribution remains an instrument of the brand rather than a dilution of it.
Matthias Janke is a juror for the Olfactory Awards.
Matthias JankeFounder, Strictly Selective Distribution
The portfolio · alphabetical
London, United Kingdom
Founded in London in 2001 by Iain Burton, Aspinal of London built its name on hand-crafted English leather goods before extending that sensibility to scent in 2024. The three eaux — formulated in France by perfumers including Serge de Oliveira and Sidonie Lancesseur — translate the house's garden-and-heritage vocabulary into restrained florals, warm spice and fig.
Timmendorfer Strand, Germany
A German niche house working in extrait concentration, Aura builds each composition around a symbolic insignia rather than a conventional theme. Its releases are entrusted to established noses, among them Cécile Zarokian and Andreas Wilhelm, and favour dense, long-trailing woods, spice and patchouli over easy legibility.
United Kingdom
BeauFort London draws on the darker chapters of Britain's sea-faring history. The creation of musician and writer Leo Crabtree, the house builds powerfully evocative, often provocative compositions around British identity and the boundaries of contemporary perfumery. Everything is produced entirely in Great Britain.
Brescia, Italy
Antonio Gardoni works at night, when daylight no longer adulterates the chemistry and the smells of the day have cleared. He infuses resins, woods, roots and metals to make his own solvents and steam-distils his own oils. Trained as an architect, he builds in layers — contemporary fragrances made with ancient techniques and modern intuition.
Mondolfo, Italy
Painter, musician, photographer — and from the age of thirteen a cathedral organist. In 2001 Filippo Sorcinelli founded LAVS, the atelier that makes sacred vestments and became a landmark for those of the last two Popes. The perfume house grew out of that world and is not one line but several. UNUM began it, born of the desire to grasp the sacredness of the mystic. Extrait de Musique names its fragrances after organ stops — Voix Humaine, Plein Jeu, Trompette, Contre Bombarde — turning the instrument he has played since childhood into scent. Délire de Voyage follows travel; Memento, Atmosphere d'Émotion, Superfluo? and X SÉ each take a subject of their own; Scented Home and Scented Car carry the work beyond the body. The house calls itself a lifestyle brand — the result of a contamination between the arts.
Australia
A luxury niche house committed to handcrafted perfume. Self-taught, well researched and meticulous in his methods, founder and perfumer Rasei Fort blends artisanal oils and extracts into compositions that are vibrant, opulent and often eccentric — running from the rich pageantry of great empires to the fresh paradise of exotic isles.
Vilnius, Lithuania
FUMparFUM is a creative studio founded in Vilnius in 2011 by Aistis Mickevičius, known in Lithuania as an artist, actor and radio DJ before he turned to perfumery. He composes everything himself, by hand and in limited runs, drawing on older European perfume-making alongside unorthodox accord pairings. Beyond bottled work he builds scent installations for objects and exhibitions.
Barcelona, Spain
Founded in Barcelona by Anna Torrents, a sculptor who turned to perfumery, GENYUM takes the artist's studio as its subject. Each fragrance is drawn from a creative discipline — painter, writer, ballerina, tattooist — and reads the materials and rituals of that work rather than its imagery. Compositions are entrusted to perfumers including Yann Vasnier, Sonia Constant and Louise Turner.
Sydney, Australia
HART + HEDI is an independent Australian house based in Sydney, founded by Juliette Fournier and Richard Adamson. The name honours Juliette's grandmother Hedi, who ran a flower shop in Solothurn, Switzerland in the 1940s. The pair build unisex compositions around native Australian flora, each bottle carrying original artwork by Sydney artist Glenn Smith. Everything is designed, blended and packed locally.
Portland, USA
Imaginary Authors is built on the idea of scent as art and art as provocation. Each fragrance follows a compelling storyline peppered with intriguing twists — layered narratives meant to generate conversation and, perhaps, to change the course of a personal story. Scents to curl up with, to share with friends, and to take along.
Edinburgh, Scotland
Established in 2010 by Scottish perfumer Euan McCall and run since 2016 with his partner Chloe Mullen, Jorum Studio has quietly built a world-class perfume industry in Scotland from its base in Edinburgh. A crafted approach runs through both formulation design and manufacture — everything is made in-house.
California, USA
LIIS was founded in 2017 by Alissa Sullivan and Leslie Hendin, who grew up minutes apart in Marin County, California and met years later in London. Alissa trained at ISIPCA and developed fragrance for houses including L'Artisan Parfumeur and Penhaligon's; Leslie studied at Central Saint Martins. Their small California-made collection is unisex, minimal, and built to wear as a second skin.
Paris, France
A tribute to the freedom of the Renaissance. Claude Marchal's small and very chic French house was built on the conviction that fine fragrance is an art rather than an industry — a source of pleasure, pride and beauty rather than a commodity. Its bottles are contemporary equivalents of the precious objects once owned by the Medicis and the Sun King.
Paris, France
The name is a declaration of intent: to talk about perfume and nothing else. Benjamin Almairac grew up on the stories his father, perfumer Michel Almairac, brought home from work. With his mother Elisabeth and his brother Romain he built an address in central Paris where the making of a perfume can be watched at close range.
Paris, France
A Parisian house founded in 2014 by Chantal Roos and her daughter Alexandra, and known as Dear Rose until its renaming in 2018. Chantal shaped some of the defining launches of modern perfumery — Opium among them — before turning to a label of her own. The collections count Fabrice Pellegrin among their perfumers.
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Shekor takes its name from the Bangla word for roots. Conceived in 2022 by creative director Abedin with co-founders Abdullah and Moutushee, the house translates the landscapes of Bangladesh — monsoon rain, the tea gardens of Sylhet, the lanes of old Dhaka — into perfume. Compositions are signed by Antonio Gardoni of Bogue Profumo and by Sultan Pasha, and produced in Spain and Italy.
Virgin Islands, Caribbean
St Johns Bay Rum began with U.S. naval officer John Webb, stationed in the Virgin Islands during the Second World War, and a single ingredient: bay leaf oil, long regarded by island natives as a health and beauty aid. Webb mixed it with Caribbean spices and packed the bottles by hand in local palm fronds — as the Fishpot Weave bottles still are today.
Wieliczka, Poland
Wolf Brothers began in Poland in 2019, founded by the brothers Wiktor and Szymon Wilk — wilk is Polish for wolf — with their partners Piotr and Łukasz. The house draws on the Bieszczady forests and Slavic myth, building its series around the animals and gods of the Polish forest with perfumers working out of Grasse. The register is wild and archaic rather than polished.
Contact
Retailers: tell us your city and what you already carry. Brands: tell us where you want to be and where you do not.
We answer every enquiry ourselves.
Send us a message