When serving customers, we try to offer hints rather than the right answer.
Tomonobu Nakamori, founder of NOSE SHOP; translated from Japanese
When choosing perfume, recognising a name is not the same as knowing which smells you enjoy. NOSE SHOP is a Japanese perfumery that has worked to bridge that gap. It has not simply gathered niche fragrances from around the world: through freely accessible sampling, concise descriptions, and perfume gacha offering chance encounters, it has shaped the very experience of choosing scent.
Its founder, Tomonobu Nakamori, was neither originally a perfumer nor someone who had spent his whole career in fragrance. He created a place to bring perfume to people after working at a regional taxation bureau, in apparel, and in cosmetics importing. The shop’s history reveals the difference between increasing the variety of perfume and increasing the number of people able to enjoy it.
Essential information
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Name | NOSE SHOP |
| Founder and representative | Tomonobu Nakamori |
| Operating company established | July 12, 2011, as BIOTOPE Inc. |
| First perfume shop | Opened August 16, 2017, at NEWoMan Shinjuku |
| Change to current company name | Renamed NOSE SHOP Inc. on December 15, 2021 |
| Activities | Operating perfumeries and an online store, importing overseas brands, and fragrance consultancy and production |
| Official website | NOSE SHOP |
It is a separate business from the Paris perfumery Nose in France.
The founder and the origins of NOSE SHOP
From the taxation bureau to running an apparel company
Nakamori’s student years did not follow a straight path towards entrepreneurship. His father died during his third year at university, and the family had to give up his father’s company. Although he felt the need to make his own way, he says he could not immediately decide on a career.
After graduating, he joined a regional taxation bureau, where he handled corporate tax examinations. Reading company accounts and talking to business owners gave him insight into both the appeal and difficulty of management. After three years, he moved to a venture company to learn business on the ground.
He joined Xavel, whose businesses included Fashionwalker. He worked in corporate planning, became the second president of Guild Corporation, and was involved in Kitson’s expansion in Japan. BIOTOPE followed this experience of both the numbers behind a business and the work of bringing products to people.
Founding the company in 2011 and turning to imports
BIOTOPE, established in July 2011, did not begin with the aim of becoming a specialist perfumery. Nakamori attempted to develop an organic cosmetics brand of his own, but encountered difficulties including sourcing ingredients. While visiting overseas brands and cosmetics companies in search of a way forward, he began to be entrusted with selling their products in Japan.
The Italian brand Laboratorio Olfattivo, which he began carrying in 2014, introduced Nakamori to niche fragrance. Here, “niche” describes a field of perfumery that values distinctive ideas and scent expression rather than aiming solely at a large mass market. It does not simply mean being little known.
Importing perfume preceded opening the shop. The work began with supplying wholesale customers, but a need gradually emerged to communicate directly through their own words and sales floor.
A conversation with Alessandro in 2015 encourages the opening
In 2015, Nakamori had an opportunity to talk with Nasomatto founder and perfumer Alessandro Gualtieri. Although many people in Japan expressed themselves through clothing, their fragrance choices were limited. This observation echoed Nakamori’s concerns as he began discovering the pleasure of comparing different perfumes.
Even when he wanted to introduce fragrances, they could not reach people without a sales floor willing to accept them. When Nakamori spoke of wanting his own shop one day, Alessandro pressed him: a large store was unnecessary; he could begin with just a few shelves. Nakamori promised to open a shop in Japan and began turning the idea into a real opening.
The encounter changed more than the range of products he handled. The centre of his work shifted from asking existing retailers to stock perfume to designing how people would encounter it.
From a pop-up experiment to the Shinjuku shop in 2017
An experimental pop-up at NEWoMan Shinjuku came first. “MINI LAB by BIOTOPE INC.” brought together several categories of cosmetics, but what kind of shop it was proved difficult to understand at a glance, and sales were disappointing. Seeing customers freely try perfumes, however, was encouraging.
The assortment was narrowed to niche fragrance, and the word NOSE became the shop’s name. On August 16, 2017, the first NOSE SHOP opened at NEWoMan Shinjuku: a specialist store within a shopping complex where people could drop in casually and compare scents at their own pace.
Subsequent development was not simply about adding shops. In 2022, Nakamori discussed both the need to introduce perfume in busy places such as stations and the possibility that more people would eventually want quieter surroundings in which to choose.
I consider physical places where people can experience scent as a bodily sensation essential.
Tomonobu Nakamori; translated from Japanese
A changing market and a listing to sustain the company
In December 2021, BIOTOPE changed its name to NOSE SHOP. Ten years after its founding, the company’s name was brought into line with its mission of communicating the pleasure of living with scent.
Speaking to the international publication BeautyMatter in 2023, Nakamori said niche fragrance was driving growth in Japan’s post-pandemic market, led by Generation Z and younger consumers. With new brands appearing worldwide, he also anticipated a process of distinguishing genuine niche fragrance from offerings that were not.
In comments in Japan in 2024, he noted increasing numbers of people in their twenties treating perfume as part of fashion and makeup. Preferences were expanding beyond straightforward freshness to gourmand scents recalling sweets, and expressions based on alcohol and tobacco. What mattered to Nakamori was consumers’ increasingly nuanced perception of differences between scents.
On March 17, 2026, NOSE SHOP listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s TOKYO PRO Market. Nakamori identified outside assessment of its organisational systems as the main purpose.
The main purpose was to strengthen the company’s governance.
Tomonobu Nakamori; translated from Japanese
From the founder’s individual judgement towards delegation under established rules: recognising that spreading a culture of enjoying perfume takes time led to building systems that would sustain the company. Searching for new scents now stood alongside creating an organisation capable of carrying on that work over the long term.
NOSE SHOP timeline
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| July 12, 2011 | BIOTOPE Inc. is established, beginning in cosmetics |
| 2014 | Begins carrying Laboratorio Olfattivo |
| 2015 | A conversation with Alessandro Gualtieri encourages plans for a directly operated shop |
| August 16, 2017 | The first NOSE SHOP opens at NEWoMan Shinjuku |
| Spring 2018 | Perfume gacha is introduced |
| December 15, 2021 | The company is renamed NOSE SHOP Inc. |
| March 2022 | KAORIUM is introduced at its daily-fragrance business KO-GU |
| January 9, 2026 | NOSE SHOP SALON opens in Omotesando |
| March 17, 2026 | Listed on TOKYO PRO Market |
How NOSE SHOP selects fragrances and creates experiences
Bringing the individuality of creators around the world into Japanese
Nakamori has worked not only on selecting perfumes but also on translating the stories behind them. Alongside importing scents, he makes the reasons for their creation accessible in Japanese.
His view of the market in BeautyMatter recognised interesting creators emerging not only in Europe and North America, but also in South America and Asia. It was an approach that looked at creators’ ideas rather than dividing the perfume world only by region or familiar brand names.
In 2024, he also discussed Maison Matine’s humorous design and Essential Parfums’ accessible prices and approach to perfumery. Introducing originality and providing an entry point to someone’s first perfume are considered together on the same sales floor.
Free sampling and words rooted in everyday life
NOSE SHOP’s semi-self-service approach makes room both for those who want to smell independently and for those seeking advice. Customers have time to discover their own reactions, with staff on hand when words become useful.
In the shops, sampling tools have evolved through devices such as glass funnels to small cups and cotton balls. Short captions likewise are not intended to make people absorb all the technical knowledge, but to encourage them to bring their noses to the next scent.
Staff translate this thinking into practice. Momoko Akima, who joined in 2019, moved from selling shoes into perfume. Her wish to talk more deeply with customers and her interest in fragrance’s personal connections supported that career change.
When Akima began, specialist fragrance-family terms such as chypre and fougère alone did not communicate enough to customers. Greater knowledge can lead to speaking only within its confines. To address that difficulty, she also draws vocabulary from films, books, and other sources.
Helping people feel closer to scent
Momoko Akima; translated from Japanese
Takuya Horikoshi, who joined in 2023 after work including stage acting, likewise continued to make respecting customers’ perceptions central to his service after becoming manager of the Ikebukuro shop. Rather than merely teaching people ways to describe perfume, he accepts what the person in front of him feels. The founding approach becomes concrete through staff members’ work.
Perfume gacha creates encounters beyond familiar preferences
Introduced in spring 2018, perfume gacha replaces the pressure of choosing one scent from many with a chance encounter. Leaving the outcome to chance offers a small step beyond always choosing familiar fragrance families.
Another part of the experience is meeting a small perfume before committing to a large bottle and being able to try it in daily life. Playfulness in the shop connects with time spent wearing fragrance at home. There is now also an official perfume gacha page online, with changing programmes and participating fragrances. An experience based on chance should not be understood as a permanently fixed product assortment.
Technology that puts scent into words, and a salon for quiet exploration
NOSE SHOP’s work also includes using technology to explore the relationship between scent and language. Its collaboration with SCENTMATIC began with an enquiry from Nakamori in early 2020, and NOSE SHOP fans helped build data linking scent and words. In March 2022, its daily-fragrance business KO-GU introduced KAORIUM, an AI system connecting scent with language.
KAORIUM structures an experience in which people smell a fragrance, choose words close to their impressions, and proceed to another scent. This does not describe a current service at every NOSE SHOP branch, but one example of a collaboration that expanded ways of choosing perfume.
Opened in Omotesando on January 9, 2026, NOSE SHOP SALON offers fragrance exploration for one group at a time, strictly by appointment. At launch, it described a method in which selected, specially trained staff listen to customers’ lifestyles and preferences before making suggestions. A setting for calm comparison was added to the experience of encountering perfume on a busy sales floor.
Shops and the online store provide two ways into perfume. In person, people smell and exchange words. Online, they read stories and bring encounters with small perfumes home. Addresses, opening hours, and current experiences are gathered in the official shop information.
Recurring throughout NOSE SHOP’s history are efforts to address hesitations that arise before perfume itself: difficulty entering a shop, putting impressions into words, or settling on a choice. Sales floors, tools, and services have answered each in turn. The shop continues to change as a place connecting creators’ expressions around the world with what individual noses perceive.
References
- How NOSE SHOP aims to change Japan’s “perfume desert” — FASHIONSNAP
- Same interview: shops, service, and the origins of perfume gacha — FASHIONSNAP
- About NOSE SHOP and its operating company — NOSE SHOP
- NOSE SHOP Inc. Representative Director Tomonobu Nakamori — Gakusei Shimbun Online
- Tracing NOSE SHOP’s history through its ninth-anniversary visuals — NOSE SHOP
- NOSE SHOP Representative Director Tomonobu Nakamori — Shogyo Shisetsu Shimbun
- Notice of company-name change and head-office relocation — NOSE SHOP
- Independent Fragrance Retailers Across the Globe — BeautyMatter
- Maintaining steady annual growth of 30%: NOSE SHOP’s representative discusses the market — WWDJAPAN
- NOSE SHOP CEO Tomonobu Nakamori on the purpose of listing — FASHIONSNAP
- NOSE SHOP company overview and scheduled listing date — Tokyo Stock Exchange
- Momoko Akima, the fragrance advocate supporting rapid expansion from the first shop — WWDJAPAN
- Takuya Horikoshi wins customers through service that does not dismiss their perceptions — WWDJAPAN
- Perfume gacha — NOSE SHOP
- Why KAORIUM, an AI system translates scent to words, is all about customer satisfaction — Epson
- Announcement of the NOSE SHOP SALON opening — NOSE SHOP
- Shop information — NOSE SHOP
