Goldfield & Banks founder Dimitri Weber turns $30,000 Australian perfume gamble into global luxury brand
An audacious idea that fused Australian botanicals and French perfumery won fans right across the world, but it took almost a decade to be welcomed home.
Ten years ago, Dimitri Weber approached Australia’s biggest retailers with a homegrown fragrance and a business plan. But not a single buyer could smell its potential. “They said, ‘Dimitri, are you for real?’,” the founder and creative director of Goldfield & Banks recalls. “I remember presenting to a very big Australian distributor who said, ‘But no one is going to buy this!’ An Australian perfume, can you imagine?”
It was 2016 and Weber, a European scent specialist, had just hard-launched his first eau de parfum at a friend’s Point Piper apartment, having moved from Paris to Sydney. Pacific Rock Moss, which remains the brand’s second-top seller and Weber’s personal favourite, was a gender-free aquatic fragrance, built around the essence of Australian coastal moss from the country’s south coast. While the concept seems plausible now, back then it was unprecedented.
A decade on, and the business Weber bootstrapped with just $30,000 and a conviction that Australia was the logical place to build a luxury fragrance house is represented in more than 70 countries. You can pick up a perfume from the 19-strong Goldfield & Banks line in the world’s most prestigious stores, from Harrods and Harvey Nichols in London to Printemps in Paris and New York. This November, in a full-circle moment timed to the brand’s 10th anniversary, Weber will unveil his first standalone boutique in Sydney’s CBD. Success stories, though, are rarely linear.
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Australians have traditionally focused outwards, which is why Weber believes he spotted an opportunity locals had missed. High-end perfumes showcasing the country’s abundant botanicals — sandalwood, boronia, wattle, blue cypress — made perfect sense to the first-time visitor. However, “Australians wanted that international appeal . . . they preferred to get their inspiration from Paris, New York and London rather than from (home), because they were sort of ashamed, in a way,” he says.
After months of rejection and with only a handful of small local stockists in support, Weber looked offshore, where he was met with far greater enthusiasm. Barneys New York became the brand’s first international outpost and the eminent European department stores swiftly followed suit. “We all went overseas first,” Australian celebrities he met would tell Weber. You make it in Hollywood, then you’re accepted at home.
The same proved true for Goldfield & Banks. While international stores embraced the house’s unique combination of native essences and haute perfumery, local retailers held out. “My story made sense to everyone except the buyers in Australia,” Weber says. And while David Jones eventually capitulated, it was on a consignment basis only — the sole stockist of 700 worldwide to insist on those terms. “I wasn’t offended,” Weber counters. “I thought, ‘you’re missing out, your customers are missing out’.”
Now, Australia is the brand’s second-largest market, and the scents sit among the top 10 in both major department stores. But that took 10 years, Weber says, comparing his journey to the arc of the Australian wine industry.
“I imagine when you went into a liquor store in Australia 50 years ago, you would see mainly French wine with a few Australian bottles on the bottom shelves,” he muses.
“Today, Australian wines are everywhere and you have to ask for the French section … give fragrances another 50 years and it’ll be a different story.”
Local challenges aside, Weber’s timing feels prescient. Fragrance, traditionally considered an occasional indulgence, has become beauty’s surprising growth engine. Euromonitor International has forecast it to drive nearly a quarter of all industry growth to 2029, while a McKinsey & Company report from June shows the category far outstripping colour cosmetics. In the US — Goldfield & Banks’ most lucrative market — premium perfume remains a retail bright spot, evidenced in August insights from market researcher Circana that show consumers choosing quality over quantity.
The statistics reinforce Weber’s strictly elevated positioning. He dismisses the stunts employed in niche perfumery — those artisanal, sometimes polarising producers — insisting that a premium experience is what builds repeat customers.
“A lot of brands make noise, but then people buy only once,” he says. “In luxury, you can’t take too many risks.” Instead, the founder draws on his background at renowned houses including Narciso Rodriguez and Tom Ford to ensure every touchpoint, from packaging to distribution materials, remains “topnotch”.
He explains, “I know we are being really carefully looked at, (and) I want Australians to be proud of what I’ve done.”
But impeccable trade collateral cannot sell scent alone. The emotional hook, Weber says, is the country’s remoteness and natural bounty.
“The luxury we have in Australia is nature, and that is invaluable for people around the world.”
It’s a lesson he learnt in the 1990s, working with famous French fashion designer and scent savant Yves Saint Laurent.
“He said, ‘Fragrance should make people travel … it’s a journey, wherever you are’, and I’ve always had that in mind,” Weber explains.
Through this lens, Australia is the ultimate destination to be bottled — a place many of the brand’s American and European fans dream of but rarely reach. Weber’s newest scent, Sunset Hour Dark Peach, evokes the golden light of Broome at dusk. The campaign for his next release, coming in early 2027, was just shot somewhere even more unexpected — Broken Hill.
“The pretty girl has changed,” Weber asserts. “She can be a wild girl who goes into the outback.”
Against the traditional Mediterranean tropes the big beauty players employ, a mining town in outback New South Wales feels fresh and compelling.
A growing desire for originality in a centuries-old industry may also account for the success of the brand’s bestseller. Ingenious Ginger, which accounts for 22 per cent of the business, is inspired by native redback ginger from the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland. It’s an obscure reference point, even by Goldfield & Banks’ standards. The perfume found fame on TikTok after three years flying under the radar for reasons even Weber can’t explain. Now, his team can hardly keep bottles in stock, such is the demand for something that feels exotic.
The reality, though, is that “The Essence of Australia”, the brand’s tagline, is made in France. It’s a fact the founder is up-front about. “I really tried, the first few years, to craft everything locally . . . I think I (saw) every single manufacturing company,” he says.
The technology was there for skincare, he says, but scent was another matter.
“A very Aussie thing to say was, ‘Oh, that’ll do’, but when you’re in markets like Korea, where they open every single box (to check) the fragrance before it is put on the shelf, you cannot have issues.”
Logistics presented another obstacle: fragrance is classified as a dangerous good which complicates international delivery at scale and speed. Shipping from Australia, Weber maintains, became impossible. France was the logical solution.
There, he works with Shiseido’s Centre of Excellence for Fragrance on production, while logistics are handled by the specialists behind Hermes, Diptyque and Armani. “Growing a luxury brand requires the founder to be where the business is,” he says of his recent move back to Paris. “So I’m back here to fight for my shelf space.”
Weber is not the first to reach this conclusion. Former Aesop CEO Michael O’Keeffe did the same in relocating to London to support the Melbourne-founded brand’s global expansion. After steering that business to a record $US2.525 billion acquisition by L’Oreal Group in 2023, O’Keeffe told Weber, “the only way is to go back to Paris”. The subtext is that while Australia may provide the raw materials and the poetic mise-en-scene, it cannot yet sustain luxury brands at scale.
The Goldfield & Banks creative process remains local, however — a passion point for Weber. And the brand’s hero botanicals are sourced from producers across the country, part of an important export economy that often goes unnoticed.
“Tasmania has the largest (privately owned) lavender fields in the world,” Weber says.
“And where do you think sandalwood comes from? There’s no more in India.”
Global beauty houses have sourced Australian-grown ingredients for years. Weber wants that to be broadcast, and small farmers better supported. He’s become an unlikely champion of local growers in the perfume industry at large.
“People from remote areas of Australia (send) me little vials of oil from plants they have on their farms and say … ‘you’re the only person in Australia who could perhaps do something with this’,” he reports.
“It brings a tear to my eye…if I can help, of course (I will).”
Weber’s agarwood supplier is now connected with storied French fragrance houses; Parisian perfumers are working with his preferred Victorian rose farm; a kunzea grower from remote Flinders Island was flown to a Goldfield & Banks event at the Sydney Opera House to meet media.
“These are not billion-dollar companies,” Weber says. “It’s giving them the opportunity to showcase their crops, their oils, their quality.”
It’s important work, he says, in an industry that can be superficial. “When you can create a fragrance brand from a country like Australia, it needs to be meaningful… and you (must) be good to people,” Weber says.
Weber is also in talks with Tourism Australia about elevating the luxury industry locally and attracting high-net-worth holiday-makers. He thinks raw materials should be on Australia’s tourism radar in the same way they are in Europe.
“Imagine a tour of the fields of boronia in Tasmania, or visiting agarwood farms in Far North Queensland,” he enthuses, likening the idea to the way Provence promotes its lavender.
“Instead of a wildlife tour, you could go to a farm, visit a plantation, discover the distillation process.”
There’s a lot to do.
“I will never be tired, that’s for sure,” Weber jokes.
After his Sydney store launch, the focus turns to expansion and, for the first time, external investment — a process he’s working through with Ernst & Young.
Acquisition isn’t imminent, but it is the ambition. At 50, Weber frames it as a succession plan rather than a payday.
“I want to make sure the brand survives the next 50 years … I don’t think I’ll be able to do that on my own,” he says.
It begs the question: can local luxury brands truly remain Australian? The success stories trace a similar curve that begins at home but is scaled abroad. Weber doesn’t pretend to have the answer, but he does have the satisfaction of being an industry trailblazer.
“Australia was not ready for a fragrance house, or for luxury,” he asserts. “It’s strange that it took a French Belgian guy to do it. Why didn’t an Aussie dare?”
He wonders if it’s because he experiences the country in a way Australians might feel exploring France or Italy.
“I have that ability to see Australia through a different lens and, as a creator, that brings me the biggest joy,” he says.
