Korean Firms Embrace Fragrance Design

Are aloe fragrances, which are often used as air fresheners, really aloe scents?

They are not. Aloe perfume is said to be made on the assumption of perfumers that “an aloe fragrance might smell like this.” A commodity manufacturer made aloe perfume by mixing grass scent with green grapes. The perfume of Jukyeom (salt roasted in bamboo joint) toothpaste was also made based on the imagination of a possible Jukyeom smell.

Manager Kim of LG Household and Health Care Corporation said, “We made Jukyeom smells by imagining its scent and flavor to make consumers feel that ‘this really smells like Jukyeom.’ In other words, we implant the product’s image using smell into customers.”

Perfumers agree that a scent suited to a brand image is more appealing than fine phrases. This means that the smell a person remembered once doesn’t easily go away as was shown in an advertisement catch phrase: “I smelled his fragrance from a female stranger”

That’s why cosmetics and commodity manufacturers depend on “scent.” Businesses, which reach their limits in technical competition, focus on fragrances that stimulate consumers’ sensitivities. This February, LG Household and Health Care Corporation established a special scent research laboratory named “Scent Berry Perfume House,” the first of its kind in the industry. A total of 7,000 scents are stored at the laboratory.

A cosmetics company “Amore Pacific” created a plan to create scents applicable worldwide by cooperating with scent-specialized companies from advanced countries in terms of perfumes such as France and the U.S.

A head of scent research team at the cosmetics company “Amore Pacific” Seo Hyung-je noted, “We use different kinds of fragrances by brands. For example, ‘Sulwhasoo,’ one of our herbal cosmetics, has a herbal scent. Another brand, ‘Hera,’ uses exotic flower scents to evoke the image of a Greek goddess.”

Scent is also a fashion statement. Luxury goods manufacturers are leading the fragrance trend with their perfumes.

Characteristic sour and sweet fragrances, in accordance with the “fun” trend catching on nowadays, are popular. For this, new products ranging from soap and toothpaste to lipsticks smelling like tropical fruit such as melon, pineapple and guava are coming onto the market.

Perfumers are artists-

Perfumer Lee Kyung-sook of Aekyung Corporation said, “I used to sing food names when food smells came out of my neighbor house even though I was sick with a severe cold.”

Perfumers boast their innate “good sense of smell.” They should tell what kind of scent it is after smelling it once. Perfumers can find great fragrances through a combination of fragrances only when they are able to distinguish thousands of different kinds of scents.

Perfumers are called “artists in the science and engineering field” because creativity that allows them to attach images to perfumes is more important than chemical knowledge. Just like musicians who make music with sound, the pride of perfumers that make fragrances with smell is enormous.

Perfumer Ernest Beaux, who made the immortal hit perfume “Chanel No. 5,” is called Mozart in the fragrance world.

Director Kim of LG Household and Health Care noted, “Foreign celebrity perfumers’ guarantees are unimaginable,” and said that they are very busy as orders for new fragrance are pouring in from around the world.

kimhs@donga.com