About Us

Serving Alberta Since 2000

No Excuses Fragrances began as a single kiosk in Kingsway Mall. Twenty five years later we operate four locations across Alberta and remain the same family business, built on the simple idea that fragrance deserves a store of its own.

It started because nothing like it existed

When Mr. Fazal opened the first kiosk in 2000, there was no specialized perfume store in Edmonton. If you wanted a fragrance you went to a department store counter, chose from whatever the store had decided to stock that season, and paid whatever the counter was asking. There was no shop dedicated to fragrance alone, run by people who knew it properly.

That gap was the whole opportunity. A store that sold nothing but fragrance could carry far more than a counter ever would, hire people who actually understood what they were selling, and price it sensibly because fragrance was the entire business rather than one department among many.

Where the name comes from

No Excuses means exactly what it says. With thousands of fragrances on our shelves and prices below the department stores, there is no excuse for not finding something you love, and no excuse for not smelling your best. It set the standard we have tried to hold ourselves to ever since.

Four locations, and a store built for oud

Today you will find three of our stores inside West Edmonton Mall and one at CrossIron Mills, just north of Calgary. Being inside two of the largest malls in Canada means we serve an enormous range of people, which has shaped the way we buy.

House of Oud came out of that. Demand for Arabian fragrance grew to the point where it deserved a space of its own rather than a shelf inside an existing store, so we gave it one. House of Oud specializes in Arabian and oud based fragrance while still carrying most of what our other stores offer, which makes it a genuine destination for anyone exploring that side of the fragrance world.

We sell fragrance and nothing else

We do not sell cosmetics, skincare, or accessories to fill out a shelf. Fragrance is all we do, and that focus is the reason everything else works. It is why our range runs into the thousands rather than the hundreds, why our prices sit below the department stores, and why our team of more than thirty people are trained specifically on fragrance rather than on retail in general.

Ask one of our staff for something fresh for summer, something for a wedding, or something that smells like a fragrance you loved fifteen years ago and no longer recognise, and you will get a real answer. That is the part a website cannot replicate, and it is why most of our customers still prefer to come in.

The bottles nobody else has

A quarter of a century of buying leaves you with things that no longer exist anywhere else. People travel to our stores specifically for discontinued fragrances, and more than once the bottle they have been hunting for years turns out to be one of the last one or two we have left from a run we bought long ago.

Those bottles are not on a list and they are not online. They are on our shelves, and finding one is usually a matter of walking in and asking.

Everyone from a first bottle to a full collection

Our customers range from someone buying their very first fragrance to collectors with hundreds of bottles at home who know more about certain fragrance houses than we do. We have regulars we have served for years, and the relationship goes both ways. They know our staff by name and our staff know them, which after twenty five years is the part we are most proud of.

Why our website is only part of the story

Our catalogue is simply too large to put online in full. Rather than pretend otherwise, we have listed our best sellers and the fragrances people ask for most, so that customers across Canada can order from us directly. What you see here is a genuine selection, but it is a fraction of what sits on our shelves.

If you can get to one of our stores, do. If you cannot, we are glad to ship to you.

Come and see us

All four locations are open during regular mall hours, and our team is always happy to help you find something, whether you know exactly what you want or have no idea where to start.

Find a location