Parfumerie Trésor: Scent Stories and Niche Perfume in Hong Kong

As long as I have breath, I will keep running a physical shop.
Pauline Lau, 2024 (translated from Chinese)

Parfumerie Trésor is a multi-brand perfume boutique founded in Hong Kong in 2014. Founder Pauline Lau and her younger brother Benny Tung brought together fragrances that could convey their makers’ stories as well as their scents.

Their starting points were memories of scent inherited from their family and the wealth of choice they had encountered in European perfume shops. Rather than composing fragrances itself, the boutique connects different makers and perfumes with people in Hong Kong. That work extends from negotiating with overseas brands to the time spent explaining a fragrance to the person standing in front of them.

Contents

At a glance
The founders and the beginnings of the boutique
Selecting perfumes and connecting their makers with Hong Kong
1. Looking beyond quality to stories and emotion
2. Carrying Nishane, Xerjoff and Ormonde Jayne
The work behind service and sampling
The main physical boutique to visit today
References

At a glance

Name: Parfumerie Trésor
Opened: August 2014, Hong Kong, China
Founder: Pauline Lau; co-founder: Benny Tung
Format: a multi-brand specialist in niche and artistic perfumery
Current main physical boutique: Sensory Vault, inside ELEMENTS in Kowloon, Hong Kong
Official website: Parfumerie Trésor

The founders and the beginnings of the boutique

From her mother’s dressing table to London’s perfume shops

Pauline’s grandfather was a sailor. Whenever he travelled, he brought perfume home for his wife, and those fragrances were passed on to Pauline’s mother. As a child, Pauline looked at the beautiful bottles arranged on her mother’s dressing table. Perfume was both something arriving from faraway places and a familiar presence at home.

While studying in London, she began travelling around Europe and collecting perfumes. For Benny, meanwhile, scent was connected to memories of his father. As a child, he spent early mornings with him watching horses at the racecourse. Even after his father’s death, he says, the smell of a now-discontinued perfume that had been given to his father brings that time back. The siblings’ emphasis on the stories of scent grows out of experiences tied to their own lives.

Opening in 2014 after a career in watches and jewellery

After returning to Hong Kong, Pauline worked in public relations and marketing in the watch and jewellery business. Her experience with brands including Blancpain and Roger Dubuis taught her how to manage brands and organise events. For some time after opening the perfume boutique, she continued running it alongside her job at a jewellery company.

Benny, who also studied in London, had discovered artistic perfumery with his sister in London and Paris. Hong Kong offered fewer choices than Europe. They saw that difference as an opportunity to open a shop of their own. In August 2014, Parfumerie Trésor opened on Lyndhurst Terrace in Central.

In preparation for the opening, Pauline flew repeatedly to Paris and London over roughly six months to meet founders and perfumers. The brands worried about distributors cutting prices or failing to introduce their products properly. Buying stock was not enough: she needed to earn their trust in how she would protect and present the perfumes.

Moving to Sheung Wan and deciding to focus on the boutique

Rising rent prompted a move to Upper Station Street in Sheung Wan in 2017. Pop-ups at Harbour City and K11 MUSEA followed. In 2021, another change in lease conditions led the business to leave its street-level shop. It expanded into shopping centres, first LANDMARK and then ELEMENTS.

I feel I haven’t given it my all yet. I can make it better!
Pauline Lau, 2020 (translated from Chinese)

Pauline left her jewellery-company job to focus on the boutique in 2019. She began taking personal responsibility for tasks large and small and organising events around perfume culture. Her earlier work in watches had been more than a detour on the way to perfume. The experience of managing brands and bringing people together carried over into running her own shop.

Year	The boutique’s development
August 2014	The siblings open on Lyndhurst Terrace in Central, Hong Kong.
2017	The boutique moves to Upper Station Street in Sheung Wan.
2019	Pauline focuses on the boutique full-time. Pop-up activity also develops.
2021	The business leaves its street-level shop and opens at LANDMARK, later expanding to ELEMENTS.
October 2026	The current official store guide lists Sensory Vault at ELEMENTS.

Selecting perfumes and connecting their makers with Hong Kong

Looking beyond quality to stories and emotion

Beyond quality, other very important criteria are the brand’s storytelling and emotional touch.
Benny Tung, 2017

When selecting products, Benny gives priority to brands that concentrate more on quality than marketing. They must also have a story, touch people emotionally and fit the atmosphere of the boutique. Exclusivity is an advantage, but it was not the only reason to choose a brand. In 2017, he explained that they imported the products themselves and sold them in their shop, in most cases as the brands’ official distributor in Hong Kong.

Before a perfume reaches the shelf, there is the work of building a relationship with its brand: understanding what makes the fragrance special and creating the words and places through which to introduce it in Hong Kong. Taking responsibility for both distribution and personal service makes the boutique’s selection a practical, hands-on undertaking.

Carrying Nishane, Xerjoff and Ormonde Jayne

The current official retail website lists Nishane, Xerjoff, Ormonde Jayne, Jovoy, Jeroboam, D’Orsay and Les Parfums de Rosine, among others. It is a specialist shop where customers can choose perfumes across several brands, including makers widely known in niche perfumery.

Individual products listed include Nishane’s Ani and Hacivat X, Xerjoff’s Erba Pura and Starlight, and Ormonde Jayne’s Montabaco and Champaca. These listings show that the shop carries specific fragrances, rather than simply displaying well-known names. An online listing, however, should not be confused with availability for sampling in the shop on the day of a visit.

The work behind service and sampling

Telling stories and waiting for a fragrance to settle

Everyone who comes into the shop is a valued customer.
Pauline Lau, reflecting around the boutique’s fifth anniversary (translated from Chinese)

The early team had no retail experience. Rather than selling hard, Pauline recalls, they kept talking about the stories and ideas behind the perfumes. Whether or not visitors bought anything, the team wanted them to leave with a deeper understanding of scent. The values they had sought to protect in their negotiations with brands became explanations offered to individual visitors.

The sampling method Benny described in 2018 was equally practical. Rather than bringing a scent strip straight to the nose after spraying it, he advised waiting a minute or two before smelling. Because a fragrance makes a different impression on paper and skin, he also recommended trying it on the wrist. First, allow the initial alcohol sharpness to subside a little; then check the fragrance on the skin. Choosing a perfume involves not only time spent listening to an explanation, but also time spent waiting for the scent to change.

Using a personality assessment to begin a conversation about preferences

The boutique also worked with psychologist Andrew Wong on a pairing project called ‘16 Personalities, 16 Perfumes’. In the process Wong described, a card with four questions provides a starting point for discussing the person’s characteristics and suggesting perfumes.

What is interesting here is Wong’s own statement that a connection between personality types and preferences for particular scents cannot be explained scientifically. He presented the project as guidance for people who did not know where to begin choosing a perfume, explaining that personal responses such as ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it’ also matter in the end. The assessment does not determine a single bottle; it opens a conversation about what someone wants from perfume.

Developing a team that can tell the stories

In 2024, Pauline said that staff who had arrived without knowledge of niche perfume nevertheless enjoyed reading, thinking and sharing, and had learned to explain the stories patiently to visitors. What she sought to develop in the shop went beyond memorising ingredient names: it was the ability to take time and communicate with another person.

Some people discover the shop or its brands online but want to smell a fragrance before buying it. The commitment to a physical shop quoted at the beginning is a commitment to continuing that work with customers. Perfumes chosen according to the founders’ tastes enter someone else’s memory through the staff’s words and the visitor’s responses. The work of the shop is to support that encounter.

The main physical boutique to visit today

In the current official store guide and the ELEMENTS directory checked on 15 October 2026, the following location is listed at the same address. The country or region is Hong Kong, China, and the city is Hong Kong. Unlike the original address in Central, this location is on the Kowloon side.

Boutique	Address
Parfumerie Trésor – Sensory Vault	Shop 2078, 2/F, Wood Zone, ELEMENTS, 1 Austin Road West, Kowloon, Hong Kong

The Olfactory Gallery at LANDMARK is known as part of the boutique’s earlier expansion, but it is not included among the current destinations here because it does not appear in the latest official store list. Opening hours differ between the shop’s website and the shopping centre’s, so they should be checked before visiting. The online shop operates as a separate sales channel from the physical boutique.