ROBOTS + PERFUMES: HOW THIS TINY LITTLE CONTRAPTION IS DISRUPTING THE MASSIVE LUXURY FRAGRANCE INDUS

Like a bartender for fragrances, NINU is a portable little gadget that “designs” the perfume you want by combining fragrances that you can then spray directly from its bottle-shaped form.

Call me old-fashioned, but I honestly didn’t think I’d stick around on this planet long enough to hear the phrase “smart-perfume” being casually thrown around… yet here we are. Meet NINU, a little handheld device that overhauls the centuries-old fragrance industry with technology. Perfumes, just like practically any other oronasal experience from food to drinks, is made by combining ‘ingredients’. The choice and intensity of these ingredients end up creating a perfume, so here’s a thought… why not mechanize it? Just like your fairly advanced coffee-maker can create cappuccinos, espressos, americanos, lattes, mochas, etc simply by playing around with ingredients and their measurements, NINU can design and ‘manufacture’ perfumes for men and women simply by combining multiple fragrance bases together in precisely calculated quantities. Think of it like a printer, that uses different ink cartridges to print out beautiful pictures.

Sure, it’s no Chanel or Burberry or Davidoff, but the way NINU disrupts the centuries-old fragrance industry is by simply offering versatility – 100 different scents inside 1 bottle. The NINU ditches the notion that you need to commit to a single 2-3 ounce bottle for a decade. Just like your outfits and personas change with each passing day, NINU allows you to change your fragrance too. The portable little device houses three vials of fluid inside that act as the base ingredients for the fragrance. With as many as 100 fragrance styles to choose from (all within NINU’s smartphone app), you can tailor-make the scent of your choice, picking between earthy, citrusy, floral, and unisex options.

The fragrance combinations are no accident either – they’re the expert handiwork of Dominique Moellhausen, winner of the “Perfumer of the Year” award at the 2020 Beautyworld Middle East Awards, who collaborated with the NINU team to design as many as 100 different fragrances, easily accessible through NINU’s app. Just choose the fragrance that you’re ‘feeling’ and the NINU device gets to work, doing its complex calibrating to mix the fragrance bases to get the accurate end result. A touch-sensitive panel lets you easily deploy the spray and voila! You’ve got an entire collection of perfumes all within one portable little gadget.