Who would have thought that a childhood gift of a single miniature bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume would spark a lifetime of collecting, a full-time career as a cosmetics buyer for Foley’s (now Macy’s) and an Account Executive role for Clinique Labs? For Leslie Ann White, that’s exactly what happened. Fast-forward to 1999 and Leslie Ann and her husband Allen were in Houston, Texas with about 50 perfume bottles and as many dollars in hand. They first showcased their diminutive treasures in a well-known Houston antique store. Now almost fifteen years later, that little corner of a brick-and- mortar antique shop has become the Miniature Perfume Shoppe with the 2009 launch of their online business. Today, they have more than 5,000 minis (and counting) in stock. In fact, the Miniature Perfume Shoppe is the largest online store in the world dedicated exclusively to the miniature perfume bottle and vintage fragrance collector, shipping to 35 countries. Through all that growth, one thorn continued to irritate them: accounting. Via email interview, Allen relayed: “Over the years we have used several different popular accounting software programs (you know the names) to manage the finances of our business, but were never totally happy with any of them. We grew tired of having to manually fix errors from bank transfers, were frustrated with limited features, and disliked having to upgrade to the latest software version every year. But thanks to a tweet from our friends at The Institute for Art and Olfaction (@ArtandOlfaction) we learned about Kashoo on Twitter and are so glad we did! Not only was our initial setup with Kashoo easy, but within minutes, we were up and running. And the excellent online help files offer advice and solutions right at our fingertips. An extra bonus for us was to discover we could track our inventory through the customizable accounts and export our business data to an Excel and PDF file. And since we conduct business in 35 countries, being able to operate in multiple currencies is also a wonderful benefit. We seriously like the ability to give our CPA (or anyone we choose) direct access to our Kashoo account. Finally, thanks to Kashoo’s simple cloud accounting, what used to be an accounting chore and headache has become easy and completely trouble free – dare I say fun! Best of all, because Kashoo’s features are so robust and reports so easy to customize, we can keep our noses in a cloud of perfume instead of a cloud of numbers. Kashoo has that part covered for us!” That is music to our ears! (Or should we say, roses to our noses?) If you’re in the market for some miniature perfume bottles, The Miniature Perfume Shoppe is the place!
