Scent and the City: Building a brand from the ground up

10 September 2025

When Monash Business School graduate Andrew Hardeman and partner Mary Fox launched Flâner, it was a creative side project. Five years later, their perfumes are set to be stocked in Berlin and New York, and they are planning a European expansion.

Urban landscapes aren’t always pretty.

However, for Monash Business School graduate Andrew Hardeman and his partner Mary Fox, that’s part of the appeal.

“Any time we travel, we love exploring cities; we like the gritty, grungy nature of urban living and lifestyles,” Mr Hardeman said.

So when the pair set out to create a fragrance range, it was only natural that the city would be their muse.

Flâner co-founders Mary Fox and Andrew Hardeman.

They called their brand Flâner - a French word with no direct English translation.

“It means to wander through cities without a goal or destination,” he said.

“All our fragrances are inspired by the fleeting moments of urban life and urban beauty that go undiscovered unless you take the time to slow down and explore without a destination in mind.”

However, while the name is a nod to leisurely detours, the path to building the brand has been anything but aimless.

Bottling their passion

Turning their idea into a business meant learning the art of perfumery from scratch.

“We smelled thousands of fragrances; we had bottles all over our kitchen bench and went to every store we could get our noses around to smell everything,” he said.

However, mastering the craft and unearthing inspiration for the range was only the beginning.

Sourcing materials and building a supply chain proved more challenging.

“That probably took the longest time - finding the right glass suppliers, caps, atomisers,” he said.

Along the way, there were inevitable setbacks, but these were seen as “exciting opportunities.”

“The hard part really starts when you have the products in market,” he said.

“You’ve spent two years trying to create this thing, and it’s beautiful, and it’s everything you ever imagined. And then you’re putting yourself out to the world and asking, ‘Do you like this?’.”

'A perfume lives in the moment'

Flâner’s fragrances are grounded in place, but each scent also reflects a mood, memory, or moment in time.

One fragrance, Sonic Silver, is a love letter to Melbourne - a gritty, shape-shifting scent with metallic notes designed to evoke the city’s tram network.

Another, Oudh Nur, is inspired by perfumer Ivan Alemany’s six years living in Egypt.

“A perfume lives in a moment,” Mr Hardeman said.

“That’s what defines a really great perfume from just a really nice one. It captures the sentiment of society.”

Each Flâner scent is unisex and crafted to convey a different feeling.

“Some are quite energetic, some are sophisticated, some are playful,” he said.

“I hope when people put on one of our fragrances, they get taken to the place or feeling or emotion they’re seeking at that point in time.”

Owning the Vision

Mr Hardeman said embracing the role of creative director had been a big part of the journey.

“Everyone has huge imposter syndrome when they're creating things,” he said.

“But it’s helped me understand so much more about business and marketing than I did before.”

With stockists already secured in Berlin and New York, the couple is now preparing to relocate to Europe to expand the brand.

“The Australian market is great, but the European market is bigger, more mature, with more potential,” he said.

Despite the brand’s growth, the couple is committed to remaining independent and steering the business on their own terms.

“We don't want to take investment; we want to just make it our own so we can drive our decisions,” he said.

Lessons from Monash

Mr Hardeman said Monash Business School gave him the foundations he needed to build a brand.

“It gave me a really good grounding in the principles of marketing and advertising, media, communications, which is really important,” he said.

“But it also gave me access to the industry that helped me have a network that I could lean on for help on the design, the packaging, how to bring things to life.”

His advice to students? Don’t wait.

“You're probably at the point in your life when you have the least responsibilities and the least risk,” he said.

“So there's no reason why you shouldn't have a crack.”

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