The Founding Hundred: a place at the beginning of a new British perfume house

Every house has a beginning, and only a few people are there for it. HERITAGE is a new British perfume house, with six eaux de parfum each composed around a single English memory, and the Founding Hundred is how we keep a place at the beginning for the people who arrive first. The first hundred to register take numbered founding places, from No. 1 to No. 100, in the order they register. Registering is free, and it commits you to nothing. Here is what a place is, what it brings and what it does not.

What a founding place is

It is a number, and a promise to write to you first. You give us an email address. If you like, you tell us which of the six you would choose first; “Undecided” is one of the answers, and a perfectly respectable one. There is a separate box for Letters from the House, our four letters a year, and it is left unticked unless you tick it.

Then we send a short note to confirm your place and your number. After that, we write once more, when pre-orders open, and nothing else unless you asked for the letters. Every email carries a link to remove your details.

There is no payment, no card and no account. A founding place obliges you to nothing at all.

What it brings

• Forty-eight hours first. When pre-orders open, founding members have 48 hours to pre-order before anyone else.
• The founding price. In those 48 hours, a bottle (50 ml of eau de parfum) is £95 at the founding pre-order price. After that, the price is £110.
• A say in what is made first. Your answer to “Which would you choose first?” helps decide which three fragrances are made first.

That is the whole of it. There is no catch further down the page.

A new British perfume house, made to order

We are making the collection to order, and in two parts. Three fragrances are made first, in time for Christmas, guided by which people ask for. The other three follow in the new year.

We have not chosen the first three, and we will not guess on your behalf: the register decides, not us. Some will know at once. Others may want to begin with Racing Green, our green chypre, which is the house signature, and read outwards from there. If you would like to read all six before you answer, each fragrance page sets out its notes, its memory and how we wear it. If you would rather be asked than read, the Consultation poses four quiet questions, about a room, an hour, a cloth and how you would like to be remembered, and suggests two.

Why the price is lower, and why it is not a sale

We do not hold sales, and the founding price is not one. It is a pre-order price for the people who commit before the first bottles are made, during their 48 hours and no longer. We think it fair that those who are there at the beginning, and who help decide what is made, should pay a little less for it. After the 48 hours, a bottle is £110, which is simply the price.

What happens when pre-orders open

We write to founding members first, and the 48 hours begin. You will be able to choose a single bottle, and the Discovery Set, The Pair and the Seasonal Box all open with our first pre-orders too.

A few things we can tell you now, because they are already set down in our terms:

• We will give you the dispatch date before you pay, and write when your order leaves us.
• You may cancel a pre-order for a full refund at any time before it is dispatched.
• Once it arrives, you also have fourteen days to cancel under the Consumer Contracts Regulations, and unopened bottles may be returned within thirty days for a full refund.
• We deliver within the United Kingdom only, for now. Tracked delivery is £4.95, and complimentary on orders from £95 and on any order with the Discovery Set. Nothing else is added at checkout.

If you register and then decide the House is not for you, you need do nothing. The 48 hours will pass, and we will not chase you.

When the hundred are taken

Places are numbered as people register, and a hundred is a hundred. We will not tell you places are running out unless they are. When thirty or fewer remain, the page will say how many, and the number will be the true one.

Once all hundred are taken, the same form keeps a waiting list instead, and we write to it the day pre-orders open to everyone. You would not have the 48 hours or the founding price, but you would hear as soon as there was something to hear.

Who it is for

The Founding Hundred is for people who would rather be remembered than noticed. It is for those who like to be at the start of something, who would sooner have a say than be sold to, and who do not mind waiting a little for a thing made properly. As we wrote in The Case for Wearing Less, the best things are discovered rather than displayed. A founding place is a quiet way of being among the first to discover these.

We are a young house with old manners. We write four letters a year and never more, and when you write to us, a real person writes back. The founding members will be the first people we write to, and the first whose answers shape the House.

If that sounds like you, register free for a founding place, and tell us which you would choose first.