When shoppers step inside the Femman precinct at Nordstan — Sweden's highest-grossing shopping centre, drawing nearly twelve million visitors a year through central Gothenburg — they expect to find fashion, food and the familiar pull of established retail names. What they might not expect is a 90-square-metre perfume boutique staffed by a family who launched their business barely a year ago and are already being described as one of the Nordic region's rising names in affordable fragrance.
Dupescents opened its new store in Femman in late March, a move that signals both ambition and confidence in a market segment that has been growing steadily across Scandinavia: high-quality fragrances inspired by sought-after scent profiles, offered at prices that do not require a second mortgage.
The Fragrance Gap
Walk into any department store perfume hall and the arithmetic is hard to ignore. A 100ml bottle from a prestige house can easily cost upwards of 1,500 kronor. For many consumers — particularly younger buyers building a fragrance wardrobe for the first time — that puts variety out of reach. You commit to one bottle and live with it for months.
The "inspired by" fragrance market exists precisely because of this gap. These are not counterfeits. They are independently produced perfumes that interpret popular scent profiles using quality ingredients, sold openly under their own brand names at a fraction of the designer price. The category has exploded globally, driven partly by fragrance communities on TikTok and YouTube where enthusiasts review, compare and recommend dupes with the same seriousness once reserved for the originals.
Dupescents has positioned itself squarely in this space. Founded in 2024 as a family business, the company stocks a curated range spanning light, fresh everyday compositions through to richer, more complex evening fragrances for both women and men, alongside complementary products like room sprays and diffuser sticks. The emphasis, according to the company, is on letting customers explore at their own pace rather than pressuring them toward a sale.
Why Nordstan, Why Now
Choosing Femman as the location for a physical store was no accident. For anyone searching for parfym i Göteborg centrum, the Nordstan complex is the gravitational centre of the city's retail landscape. Situated directly adjacent to Gothenburg Central Station, it is the first and last stop for commuters, tourists and day-trippers from across western Sweden. Foot traffic is measured not in thousands but in millions.
Femman itself has undergone significant renovation in recent years under the ownership of property company Hufvudstaden, with improved sightlines, redesigned entrances and a curated tenant mix that blends international brands with independent retailers. Dupescents joins a precinct that is actively positioning itself as more than just another shopping mall — it wants to be a destination.
For a fragrance brand, physical retail solves a problem that e-commerce cannot: you need to smell a perfume before you fall in love with it. While Dupescents operates an online shop with fast delivery across Sweden, the Femman store offers something the website never could — the chance to hold a tester, spray it on skin, wait twenty minutes for the dry-down and decide with your nose rather than someone else's description.
A Shifting Market
The growth of the affordable fragrance category reflects a broader shift in how Swedish consumers think about luxury. The idea that quality and accessibility are mutually exclusive has been eroding for years, accelerated by a generation of shoppers who grew up with fast fashion and have carried the same expectations of variety and value into adjacent categories.
Fragrance was one of the last holdouts. Unlike clothing or cosmetics, where budget alternatives have been mainstream for decades, perfume remained stubbornly premium. The inspired-by market has changed that, and brands like Dupescents — offering Parfym Nordstan shoppers can actually browse without a sales assistant hovering — are a physical expression of the shift.
The store's 90 square metres in Femman are designed to feel more like a boutique than a counter. Knowledgeable staff are available, but the layout encourages independent exploration — a deliberate choice that mirrors the way many customers now discover fragrances online before buying in person.
What Comes Next
Dupescents' expansion into one of Sweden's most prominent retail locations, less than two years after the company was founded, raises an obvious question: how far can an independent, family-owned fragrance business scale in a market still dominated by multinational beauty conglomerates?
The answer may lie in the economics. Without the licensing fees, celebrity endorsements and global advertising campaigns that inflate designer fragrance prices, inspired-by brands operate with fundamentally different cost structures. They can offer a 100ml bottle at a price point where buying three or four different scents becomes realistic — building the kind of varied fragrance collection that was once the preserve of enthusiasts with deep pockets.
For Gothenburg shoppers, the proposition is straightforward. The next time you find yourself in Nordstan — whether you came for the fashion, the food or simply the shelter from the west coast rain — there is now a reason to stop, explore and discover that the perfume you have been admiring from afar might be more accessible than you thought.