Dollars and Scents
Retailers Use Technology to Get Shoppers by Nose

By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 19, 2006

When Joanne Wallace of Waldorf smells cinnamon, it feels like Christmas. Every year, her family keeps a pot of water and cinnamon sticks simmering on their wood-burning stove. "It just has such a beautiful smell," she said. "It's a happy smell."

It's also the smell inside the Sony Style store at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City.

Through Christmas, the chain is filling its stores with a designer scent called "Seasons Greetings," which also has undertones of gingerbread, as a way to evoke happy memories in customers and put them in the shopping spirit. Other retailers are following suit with custom fragrances of their own. Shoppers' eyes and ears have been numbed by excessive decorations and endless loops of carols, marketers say. The nose is the latest frontier.

"It's really important for these retailers to be able to try to grab these consumers' senses any way they can," said David J. Urban, professor of marketing at Virginia Commonwealth University. "Smell can be a dominant cue."

The burgeoning "scent technology" industry has fueled sales at companies such as ScentAir. Since its founding six years ago, the Charlotte firm has developed fragrances for thousands of retailers, including Sony, said chief executive David Van Epps. Many placed their orders for holiday smells over the summer. Popular requests include mulling spices, pine trees and cranberry sauce.

"When you can put a great aroma in that's reminiscent of a time or place, it really pays off," Van Epps said.

Last year, the company developed a sugar cookie scent for Bloomingdale's to pump into its Christmas shop. This holiday, KB Toys has experimented with a minty chocolate fragrance in some stores, Van Epps said.

The product is not just for holiday use, however. Sony fills its stores with a mandarin orange and vanilla fragrance year round, and KB has experimented with scents of Creamsicle, cotton candy and Play-Doh. Upscale men's clothier Thomas Pink has ordered an ambient version of its signature "line-dried linen" scent from Lake Elmo, Minn.-based AromaSys.

ScentAir's fragrances are dispersed by a small coffee can-shaped device called the ScentWave. At the Sony Style store in Pentagon City recently, the machine was sitting at the front door, emitting waves of "Seasons Greetings" that drove out the smell of chicken stir-fry from the food court below. Customers who spent more than $200 got complimentary sachets of scent beads. Others could buy them for $1.50 if they craved that in-store experience in their own homes. Store manager Frank Kroner said one customer last week bought about 10.

At the Sony Style store on Madison Avenue in New York, the scent is even pumped onto the street, said Christine Belich, vice president of visual merchandising. On a windy day, you can smell it for several blocks.

"We're Sony, and we're not warm and fuzzy. [We're] much more slick and much more cutting edge," said Belich, who helped come up with the idea. "But at the same time, you want to soften that a little bit."

Van Epps said that stocking and running ScentAir's machines costs about $100 per month. Other companies operate more elaborate systems -- such as AromaSys, which inserts the fragrance into the air-conditioning system for a one-time cost of $6,000 to $8,000. That system is used mainly by casinos and hotels, including some operated by Bethesda-based Marriott. The initiative has yet to reach Washington area locations, Marriott spokesman John Wolf said, but the company has tested a combination of peaches, raspberries, roses and violets at hotels in urban areas.

Envirodine Studios, a scent marketing company outside Atlanta, has sold more than 4,000 EnviroScent machines since it began producing them four years ago. Chief executive Jeffrey S. Sherwood would not disclose the identities of his clients but said they included household names.

"If you looked at the biggest retailers in the country, you'd be surprised by how few people don't use scent," he said.

Experts say fragrance is an effective sales tool because smell is the sense most directly connected to emotion and memory.

"You smell a rose, and your brain doesn't go, R-O-S-E," said Charles S. Zuker, a researcher with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "Your brain recalls what a rose is like."

Daniel Lieberman, an associate professor of psychiatry at George Washington University, called smell the most "primitive" of the senses. Odor receptors in the nose are actually brain cells, he said. He cited recent studies that linked increased electrical and metabolic activity in the brain to pleasant odors.

Sometimes, a seemingly innocuous scent can evoke a negative reaction.

The American Lung Association has received several complaints about scented stores, spokeswoman Janice Nolen said. The fragrances have triggered flare-ups for asthma sufferers and those sensitive to certain chemicals.

"I don't want to sound like the Grinch," Nolen said, but "sometimes these fragrances can be a barrier to people."

Evelyn Idelson of Cleveland Park, 80, is one of them. She first noticed that her laundry detergent was scented. Then her dishwashing liquid. Now, she said, everything smells. "I can't stand it," she said. "I think it's an invasion of personal space."

Two weeks ago in San Francisco, the California Milk Processor Board had to take down ads in bus shelters that gave off the scent of chocolate chip cookies. Spokeswoman Molly Ireland said she had received complaints from several groups, including an anti-obesity organization and people with diabetes. Taunting them with the smell of off-limits cookies was just cruel, they said.

The milk board took down the ads a day after putting them up.