Necessary?

The English have a long and honorable tradition of tolerating eccentrics, but the Baltesz family of Bristol is really pushing the envelope. Together with their teenage children, Mr. and Mrs. Baltesz are peeing into bottles and spritzing the neighborhood with their urine. Why, you ask? To help their lost dog Simon find his way home, of course. They hope he’ll follow the scent trail.

Unlike their less fastidious contemporaries, however, members of the Baltesz family dilute their urine before leaving it in public places. Why, you ask? (What, are you dense?)

Because Jane Hayes, their finder-of-lost-dogs consultant, says that

A dog’s sense of smell is 3,000 times more potent than ours . . .

Three thousand times more potent? Ms. Hayes clearly hasn’t read What the Nose Knows, or she'd know that controlled studies find the human and canine nose are close to parity. In fact, I’ll bet her a warm bottle of recycled Sierra Nevada Pale Ale that she can’t come up with scientific evidence to support her claim.

It’s Already Tomorrow in Japan

Like particle beams in a circular accelerator, two Japanese cultural obsessions—smell and technology—have collided to produce a sparkling array of new olfactory devices.

Tokyo’s Promotool Corp. began as a cosmetic sampling outfit. When it invented a one-note cinematic aroma generator for screenings of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the company’s management saw the potential of scent marketing. Since then they’ve placed devices that have boosted curry sales (another obsession!) in supermarkets and coffee sales in convenience stores. According to Promotool president Kenichi Inoue,

It’s difficult not to smell something, and it directly sends commands to your brain, so the promotional effect is big.

Hmmm. Might want to soften the rhetoric a bit, Inoue-san; wouldn't a “polite olfactory suggestion” of curry have an equally big promotional effect?

Japan Times writer Kazuaki Nagata also describes @aroma, a Tokyo firm that has been placing scent devices in hotels and stores to create brand-specific ambience.
Then there’s NTT Com’s i-Aroma device which links to your PC with a USB cable. It contains six aromas that can be released individually or in combinations. NTT is promoting the device in consumer trials this summer featuring online content and smells designed by an aromatherapist(natch!) and an astrologer (whuh?).

Gizmag writer Paul Ridden has the story. He’s old enough—or has Googled long enough—to recall DigiScent’s similar iSmell device. Ridden says

Sadly DigiScents failed to attract the investment it needed and went bust in 2001.

Well, that’s partly correct—I know because I was there. Yes, the company went bust in 2001, but it had attracted tons of money. The problem wasn’t technology or lack of money. But that’s a story for another day.

さようなら

Rearview Aromatherapy

New air freshener line for cars promises to steer you away from road rage.

[photo by Murilee Martin from her Smell Fresh for the Crusher series.]

Katie's Got a Brand New Blog

She’s doing the Jerk

She’s doing the Fly

Don't play her cheap ’cause you know she ain’t shy.

She ain’t no drag . . .

Katie’s got a brand new bag.

Guerlain’s Other Problem

Having waxed indignant about Guerlain’s ham-handed treatment of fragrance blogger Octavian Coifan, I was surprised to see the brand name in a different context a few days later. Reporter Nedra Rhone wrote a Sunday feature for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on how to find the right summer fragrance. Here’s her local hook for the story:

Six years ago, Atlanta fragrance lover Diane Weissman began decanting perfumes into small vials or bottles that she would sell on eBay to customers who wanted to sample fragrances.

So far so good—people sell all kinds of stuff of eBay. Then comes this:

Two years ago, Weissman and three other decanters joined forces to launch ThePerfumedCourt.com . . . offering samples of high-end fragrances . . . This summer, Weissman designed a sampler that includes fragrances from Hermes, Guerlain, Estee Lauder and Chantecaille. For $45, customers get a little whiff of 16 summer scents in four categories . . .

Whoa! Ms. Weissman and her partners have been re-selling Guerlain perfume in stock bottles for two years. If there was ever a righteous legal target for the Goons of Guerlain wouldn’t ThePerfumedCourt.com be it?

The decanters are directly profiting on Guerlain’s trademarks without Guerlain’s permission. The rationale for trademarks is to assure the public they are buying genuine goods whose quality is backed by the manufacturer. Someone less ethical than Ms. Weissman might fraudulently sell inferior perfume as “Guerlain.” Someone less careful than Ms. Weissman might accidentally contaminate the decanted samples. Someone less sane than Ms. Weissman might deliberately adulterate the “Guerlain.” Any of these scenarios are potentially damaging to Guerlain’s commercial reputation and it would be reasonable for the company to put the kibosh on decanters.

In fact, the murky legal status of selling decanted samples prompted eBay to ban such transactions in April, 2007. The Basenotes site quickly followed by barring sales or swapping of decants. In response, independent decanter sites like ThePerfumedCourt have sprung up all over.

That people are willing to pay for grey-market trial samples of perfume ought to be a big clue to manufacturers that their marketing model needs to change. They’d do well to get ahead of the curve on this phenomenon and do it quickly. Otherwise they’ll end up like the music industry—suing their own consumer base.

In the meantime, I’ll be listening for the legal beagle that hasn’t barked.