Every industry has its unique aromas, like freshly sawn lumber (home building), leather (furniture) or burnt milk (dairy).
The sense of smell is a powerful key to unlocking memories. When I smell leather, for example, I’m transported to the furniture showrooms in High Point, N.C. Catching a whiff of sawn lumber takes me back to the model home villages I used to tour in Houston.Over the years of editing numerous business magazines and websites, I have acquired a nose full of scents and aromas that I associate with different businesses and manufacturing.
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| One of the Thorne miniature rooms in the Art Institute of Chicago. |
Take the aforementioned leather/furniture association. For 10 years, I visited High Point twice a year (plus other furniture and gift markets) as the editor of a home decor publication. Today, when I catch the scent of leather, I think immediately of the International Home Furnishings Center in that city. I can also layer on the aroma of freshly brewed espresso from the coffee shop in the lobby of that main showroom building.
Retail gift and souvenir shops are imbued with the aroma of scented candles. These stores might carry one or two lines of candles, which is enough to trigger a sneezing fit in me. Now imagine the reaction from visiting a wholesale showroom stocked with nothing but scented candles. The smell of green apple, vanilla or lilac reminds me of candles and home decor showrooms.
Budget and luxury hotels have their own unique sense signatures. The lower-priced ones smell of air freshener trying (but failing) to mask the aroma of stale air and mildew.
In higher-priced hotels, the scent of bathroom amenities take over. Shampoos, conditioners and lotions can smell of sage, coconut or lavender. The scent of lilies and other fresh-cut flowers makes me think of the lobbies of upmarket hotels.
As editor of a magazine catering to the global hotel industry, I visited London often. My room in that city’s Langham Hotel was scented with essential oils that guests could use in bath water to overcome jet lag. The smell of rosemary in grape seed oil takes me back to the Langham.
When I edited a magazine for home builders, I visited model homes in Georgia, Texas, Colorado, Illinois and California. Sand and cement, lumber, fresh paint and carpeting are the smells of newly built houses. The scents never varied. They were the constants. They can transport me back in time and across the country.
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| Inside a dairy processing plant in California. |
Editing a publication about dairy foods took me into many processing plants throughout the United States. If there was a pasteurizing unit on the premises, then there was sure to be the distinctive slightly sweet aroma of scalded milk. I asked a plant manager once if he noticed it. He said no, he had worked in the industry for so long that it was just a background aroma.
My first regular job was delivering the afternoon newspaper. I was a pre-teen carrying 90 newspapers in a bag I wore over my shoulders. The smell of fresh ink on newsprint has never left me. I’m on the receiving end of home delivery nowadays. When I slide that newspaper out of the plastic sleeve and bury my nose into the paper, I’ve transported myself back to the age of 12.
There’s nothing like having business scents.