Blue sky over Lenin's house

The sky is still blue and will probably remain like that for the rest of the week. Great. The perfect weather for Pascal, my dear friend from Medieval art&vie and favourite perfume seller in Zurich. “What has weather to do with perfume selling?”, you might ask. “A lot”, he would probably tell you. First, there is a simple mood effect. The sun is shining and you are in a good mood and hence people seem to buy easier and are less worried about their credit card statement at the end of the month.

Second, nice weather = more people walking around in Zurich downtown = more people passing by Pascal’s shop. A shop, which happens to be close to the house where Lenin once lived (hence a lot of tourists passing by) and where Lenin thought about some things and came up with ideas that ultimately changed the world. How dangerous his ideas were, you may judge from the fact that the train coach that brought Lenin from Switzerland back through parts of the German Kaiserreich, was hermetically closed. They knew what Lenin was about to do and hence the Germans (in war with Russia and the rest of the world back then) let him pass, but made sure he could not infect Germany…

Thus, not really addressing the same questions that Lenin was dealing with, I had a little idea a couple of weeks ago. I proposed Pascal to place a bottle of the L’air du désert marocain outside, allowing people to spray (as much as they like) and test the perfume without the hassle of entering the shop.

Although this is not really what you aim at being a shop owner (shy clients not entering your shop), this is exactly what he did and since then...the weather became somewhat of an important sales factor and you see the perfumer praying for sun. Obviously, people like things being offered to them, and I think they like to test for themselves, without someone standing behind them, I think clients are shy, most of us probably are (well, I am).

Now, of course, the next question you might ask is: “How do you intend to bring this to the internet?”. “Well”, I would say, “I think I have to ask Lenin, maybe he had a few more ideas beyond revolution”.