Last year we met so many interesting people that I’d have to check my diary to count up. Musicians, scientists, photographers, perfumers, academics, dancers, designers, writers, accountants and any number of estate agents, as we were looking for a new building (and are pretty sure we’ve found one).

Our oddest experiences were with men who have a great deal of money, but whose lives are dedicated to making even more of it. What I’ve learned is that they can not understand (or bend to their will) people who just aren’t all that that interested in joining them in their quest. For creative sorts, money is for making things happen, not for making more money.

There’s seems to be some weird secret tournament that the super-rich compete in to get the biggest pile of money before they die. A couple of those sought us out, and wanted to talk. At first they presented themselves as benefactors, like the Medicis, patrons of artists and creators, using their wealth to enrich their lives with new experiences.

These are smart people. At least I think they are. One of them constantly contradicted himself, and I’m not certain whether this was to confuse me, or if he was just confused. In the end I think he was playing some kind of game, aiming to undermine.

When I turned his money down he suddenly turned vitriolic scorn on my strategy – to grow slowly and organically by being lovely to people, and by collaborating on exciting creative projects.

By telling me that I would probably be out of business by the end of 2018 without his help all he did was show me how lucky I was to have escaped before he’d set up his proposed holding company and shoved me into a 9-9 job in a shiny Mayfair prison.

Everything we’ve grown over the last eight years at 4160Tuesdays: our collection of customers, our Facebook group – a safe place where perfume lovers of all kinds can come and play – our collection of fragrances, are of no value to such men.

To be fair the collection did appeal. They wanted the IP, our intellectual property – the formulas – and to know the “route to market” – that’s the path that new companies follow when they want to get bought by Estee Lauder, and let’s face it, many of them do. I’m just not running one of them.

The promise of shed loads of cash doesn’t work on someone who really doesn’t want to start a money collection. If what you want money for is to continue to do more interesting things, to grow your community, change things you think are wrong and put them right, do it differently and better, the men with money can’t buy you. They are looking in the wrong places for people whose ideas are more important than their bank accounts. They are casting their nets in places we don’t swim.

For 2019, we’ve found the new building, although sugning the lease seems to be more bother tha expected. We have to grow, we need more space and we’re going to be paying bucket loads more rent, so we’ve got plans to do more of what we do – despite all the political and economic threats looming right now – to build our community the way we’ve been doing, but with even more adventures, bigger partnerships, collaborations and explorations.

At first, it did seem as if the men with the money might be the way to make this easier, to smooth the path and take all the problems away. In the end I’m left with an impression of the wolf dressed up in grandmother’s bonnet flashing glimses of its shiny canines.

So for the forseeable future (which is pretty short in times like these) we’re as indie and indie can be. We love what we do and we like to share it.

If you’d like to work with us, honestly we’re almost full up for 2019 witb projects to take us up to September, but get in touch if you like the sound of a partnership that will make beautiful things, not merely money.