I had already written this entire section, but accidentally deleted all my progress, so this is my second attempt. At this point in my project, it was time to get started on secondary and primary research. My position as a supervisor in the flagship Rituals location in Ireland gave me easy access to all the hands-on research I needed, I was really excited about that. Each day for over a year, I had the chance to speak to 100-200 people a day, and I started to make note of what kinds of products, fragrances, and ingredients, people were asking for that Rituals doesn’t use, the full range of products is extensive, but some customers still managed to surprise me with niche requests.
Once I had comprised a list of the things my coworkers and I had heard customers ask for, requests we couldn’t fulfil, I started to whittle down which elements I thought were strong enough to incorporate into my hypothetical collections. Customers were asking for delicate and floral scents like vanilla, lavender, and jasmine, fresh scents like coconut and sandalwood, and deeper, spices fragrances like cinnamon. (As of August 2022, there are now collections that incorporate sandalwood, lavender, and jasmine.) At this point, I was able to start to break up my categories by way of fragrances, and started to let my own notes pave out the basis of each idea. Once I had my moods/fragrances/ingredients somewhat on paper, I put together inspiration and mood boards. First came the inspiration boards, which were made up of past and present Rituals collections I wanted to draw inspiration from for the corresponding scent category, the mood board came after, and sought to outline the basic colours, emotions, and textures of the visuals I wanted to attempt.
Don’t worry, you’ll see these boards in the next section. It would make the most sense to end this chapter by explaining what ingredients/fragrances/visuals I had chosen for each of the 3 categories, but I want to show the progression of my notes for each grouping, which I’ll do next.
