Would a Marketplace by any other name smell as sweet?
Retailers spend a lot of time thinking about what the shopping experience is like for customers, and how that reflects on the store’s brand. They think about the signature decor of the store, they think about lighting and they think about overhead music –and they think about the store’s scent. In fact, scent is something they’ve thought long and hard about.
“If [retailers] don’t connect and make it a comfortable, welcoming place to shop, and to spend their money, consumers will go somewhere else” says Andy Kindfuller, CEO of ScentAir. His company creates signature scents based on what he calls “brand attributes.”
Kindfuller is adamant that these aren’t perfumes. Their scents are dispersed through a space with the company’s equipment. They’ve worked with medical waiting rooms where the goal was to create a calming atmosphere, with a hotel whose lobby now subtly smells like cookies and tea, and a sport stadium that smells, as Kindfuller says, “like victory.”
ScentAir works closely with their client’s marketing team as they devise a scent. When it comes to actually creating the fragrance, Kindfuller says it really does boil down to a team of folks in a room with a whiteboard.
“The perfumers that we use, use up to 10,000 different ingredients… what’s amazing is they can identify those 10,000 just by smell and so we will often create a fragrance that can have several hundred different notes.”
Kindfuller and his team even made a scent for Marketplace. We’ve been having our staff try them out today.
Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal:
Marketplace reporter Krissy Clark:
Marketplace reporter David Weinberg:
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