The Seasonal Box: a perfume subscription box UK-wide, with a full bottle each season

Search for “perfume subscription box UK” and many of the services you find send a small decant each month. The Seasonal Box sends something else: four times a year, at the turn of each season, a green box holding a letter written for that season, a full 50 ml eau de parfum chosen for you, and a little something to welcome the season in. If you have been wondering whether any of them are worth it, here is how ours works, what it costs and how you leave it, set down plainly.

What a perfume subscription box usually holds

Many fragrance subscriptions work by decanting. A few millilitres are poured from a full bottle into a small atomiser, and a new one arrives every month. It is a sensible way to try a great many fragrances, and for some people it is exactly right.

It is not what we wanted to make. A decant is a sample, and a sample asks you to keep choosing. We wanted the opposite: a bottle you can actually wear for a season, on the coat you wear that season, arriving when the weather turns. So each Seasonal Box holds a full bottle, the same 50 ml eau de parfum you would buy on its own.

What is in the Seasonal Box

• A letter from the House, written for that season.
• A full 50 ml eau de parfum, chosen for you.
• A little something to welcome the season in.

The boxes arrive at each turn of the season: early in March, June, September and December. Delivery within the UK is complimentary on every box, by tracked courier. The photograph above shows Highland, our aromatic smoky fragrance, in the green box, but every member’s bottle is their own.

How your bottle is chosen

You may choose your first bottle yourself, or leave it to us. After that, we choose each season’s bottle from your answers to the Consultation and from what you already have. We name it in a letter a week ahead, so you may always ask for another. A subscription that chooses for you should, we think, also let you say no.

The price, and the year

We would rather know you for years than sell to you once. So a bottle each season costs less than one bought alone: £95 a box, against £110 for a bottle bought on its own, and your price is kept for as long as you remain a member.

Membership is for a year: four boxes, £380 in all. The first is paid when you join, and each later box is charged as its season turns. We write at least seven days before every charge, with the amount, the date and the bottle we have chosen, and we write again when your first year is complete. Once the year is complete, it carries on box by box at the same price.

Changing your mind

This is the part that matters most when you join anything for a year, so here it is in full:

• You may cancel for a full refund at any time until your first box arrives, and for fourteen days after it arrives. Please send it back unopened.
• After that, during your first year, you may ask to stop at any time. Your membership then ends with your fourth box, and nothing more is charged.
• Once your first year is complete, you may cancel at any time, free of charge, from your account or the link in any membership letter.
• After the first year you may also skip one box in any twelve months, and if a box has not yet left us, you may have it refunded within fourteen days of its charge.

Buying online in the UK usually comes with a fourteen-day right to cancel, under the Consumer Contracts Regulations, and our terms set out exactly how cancelling works for a year of boxes. The Seasonal Box is also a product of its own: you join only by choosing it, and by ticking a separate box at checkout to agree to its terms, which are shown in full before you pay. A bottle on its own is always just a bottle.

Are perfume subscriptions worth it?

It depends on what you want from one, and it is worth being honest about it.

When it is worth it

• You like your fragrance to change with the weather, and you would enjoy something brighter in June and something warmer in December.
• You would like to come to know a collection properly, one bottle and one season at a time.
• You want full bottles rather than samples. Four boxes cost £380 for the year; four bottles bought on their own at £110 would come to £440.
• You like a letter, and a parcel, and not having to think about it.

When it is not

• You wear one fragrance all year, and you know which. Then buy that bottle, and wear it.
• You would rather sample widely across many houses. A decant service will suit you better.
• You are not yet sure our fragrances are for you at all. In that case, begin with the Discovery Set, which puts all six on your skin at home, one a day.

We would rather you joined knowing all this than joined and wished you had not.

When you can join

The Seasonal Box opens with our first pre-orders, and no one can join before then. Registering is free, commits you to nothing, and means we write the day you can join. The first hundred people to register also take a numbered founding place, with 48 hours to pre-order bottles before anyone else at the founding price of £95. After that, a bottle on its own is £110.

We are making the collection to order: three fragrances first, in time for Christmas, guided by which people ask for, and the other three in the new year. The details of the first box, including when it travels, will come when pre-orders open.

If a year of full bottles, chosen with care and named a week ahead, sounds like the right sort of subscription, register free and we will write the day the Seasonal Box opens.