We recently connected with Maurizio Nardi and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Maurizio , thanks for joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

We came up with the name AQUA D’ KEYS ( “the water of the Keys” ) inspired by the image of the beautiful teal waters surrounding our islands. Our product is bottled in an elegant transparent teal glass bottle, there is a visual, as well as the olfactory sense that completes the whole product. It is actually grammatically incorrect, but it offers a great visual symmetry and reflects a bit on the “not always correct” lifestyle of the Keys, a very bohemian place where almost anything goes.

Maurizio , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Neither I nor any of my business partners were familiar with the perfume/cosmetic industry when we first started this venture. It all began with an idea and a lot of enthusiasm, but we had to quickly learn the ins and outs of this business, and what takes to create a unique fragrance. The vision was to create a unique scent that would capture the fresh, romantic, and adventurous spirit of the Florida Keys. A unique takeaway that will instantly remind you of memories made, great adventures, and fun times on the islands. AQUA D’ KEYS was born after a year-long scrutiny of many fragrances, notes, and accords, to reach what today is our complete line of six unique fragrances. We named each fragrance after some of the Keys, because like every island, every fragrance has its distinct personality. To complement the fragrance line we then added body lotions, body washes, and other body care products and developed a whole separate home fragrance line with hand-poured candles, reed diffusers, and wax melts. Now, more than a year after opening our first shop in downtown Key West, we are thrilled to encounter repeating customers who enjoy our products every day and help many others discover our line and take home their favorite scent of the keys. The community is recognizing our product and is proud of what we are offering, as I think they understand where is coming from, locals with a passion for the place they live in. That’s truly what AQUA D’ KEYS is all about, it has to do with a place, the place you live in, the place you visit, the place you dream of after you leave. It’s almost as if we were able to bottle your island experience.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My partners are my family and are my friends. We all live in the Florida Keys and enjoy life on the water: boating, snorkeling, diving, fishing, or relaxing on the beach. We cheer to the sunsets and enjoy a walk through the narrow streets of Key West charmed by the fragrant blooming of the jasmine. We met almost 15 years ago here in the Keys, and since then, have we shared many adventures. It was only after visiting Europe a few years back that we discovered a local fragrance, in a small town we were visiting, it was created with the locality in mind, and it was great! Every time I use it now I can’t help but relive moments of that beautiful vacation… COVID was a bit to blame for our business joining, as we were all confined in our beautiful island paradise with plenty of time to dream. I remember one time after dinner, we started to discuss the idea of a perfume representative of the Keys, like the one we tried back in that small village in Europe. I still remember my friend’s words, “I think we should do it”. Since then we were no longer just friends, we became that night, business partners.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Being a new brand that is principally inspired by a place is not easy… We are still young and still learning, but we found out that honesty and integrity are some of the best tools. Many of our shoppers didn’t know our brand, many didn’t believe we were a local business. We had to tell our story. We had to make sure they understood where we were coming from and what we were selling. We started advertising to create visual repetition, in the hope that someone who sees your ad will recognize the store when passing by it. We learned fast that our brand picture alone was not working. Again, we needed to tell our story. We started changing our advertising campaign from a simple photographic ad to an advertorial, an editorial, or even looking into putting out interviews of us and how our brand was born. We discovered that many more customers were drawn to the store by reading our story and wanting to really see, and smell, the product for themselves. They were captivated by our story and understood we were a local brand, a unique product with deeper roots. They got a message that just a pretty picture of a bottle would have not conveyed. Perhaps it will work a few years from now, but today what’s important is to tell the story of our journey, of our brand, of how AQUA D’ KEYS is now a real fragrance with a soul.

Contact Info:

• Website: aquadkeys.com
• Instagram: aquadkeys
• Facebook: Aqua D’ Keys

Image Credits
Carol Tedesco