You walk into a place and it immediately attracts – or repels. You can’t quite put your figure on it, but then it hits you as its scent tickles your nostrils and lingers in memory.
Of the five senses, it is your sense of smell that provides the longest-lasting memories, said Tyler Prow, head of public relations at Aroma360, offering technology and fragrance oils for your car, home and business, not to mention perfumes for your person. With more than 500 employees and 22 stores nationwide — including the latest, which officially launched at The Westchester in White Plains on Saturday, March 29 – Aroma360 is the No. 1 luxury scents brand.
At its newest brick and mortar, there are plenty of opportunities to make sensuous memories.
The creamy, airy, lucent design – created by an in-house team – provides an atmosphere in which nothing stands between you and sampling the scents. Well, maybe the offered glass of wine that reinforces the connection between the grappa and fragrance as both have base, middle and top notes.
Sipping, seeing and scenting, you’ll discover candles, room sprays, reed diffusers and motion-sensing car diffusers, along with room diffusers that include the cylindrical, under 1-foot-tall Mini Pro, which scents up to 600 square feet ( Prow described it as “a candle on steroids”); the VanGogh360, which you can use as a standalone or with your HVAC system for an area up to 1,800 square feet; and the Museum360 XL, which works only through an HVAC system in an area up to 6,000 square feet. Basically, Prow said, the devices are free. Instead, you pay a monthly subscription fee for the scents.
There are partnerships with such brands as Disney and the NBA and even an Autographed SPKR XL Scent Diffuser in two versions – festooned with such names as Mary J. Blige, Metallica and James Taylor; or Cher, Dua Lupa and Kelly Clarkson – that marries scent and sound. The store uses an SPKR XL diffuser, so that the shopper has a full sensory experience of sight, sound, smell, taste and, of course, touch, with all those glass domes to lift, releasing the scents.
The most popular is the woodsy My Way, inspired by 1 Hotel, Miami Beach, and redolent of amber, sandalwood and leather. Others include the clean, spa-like Escapade (black pepper, jasmine, ozone, evoking The Ritz-Carlton, South Beach) and Stargazing (designed for Continuum, a luxury residence, also in South Beach, with notes of jasmine, bergamot and white tea).
That the fanciful scents, with equally fanciful names, often suggest hotels is no accident. Aroma360’s sister company, Hotel Collection,features luxury hotel-inspired scents and lifestyle products like wine sets and accessories, laundry pods and luggage with built-in digital scales, GPS trackers and UBS chargers.
It was a hotel that spurred entrepreneur Benzion Aboud to create the 10-year-old Aroma360. He had sold his first business, a cellphone-kiosk company, and moved from New Jersey to Boca Raton, Florida, where he wanted to create a home that smelled like the Hotel Costes in Paris. He learned it would cost him $60,000 to do so.
Figuring there had to be a better, more economical way to scent your surroundings, Aboud embarked on a quest that shows no signs of stopping. May 1 will see the launch of the third fragrance collection, with Miami joining Original and Metallica. (Each collection has five fragrances.) Also in May, Aroma360 bows at Hudson Yards in Manhattan. Two stores are planned for New Jersey this summer and two for Dubai, United Arab Emirates, along with stores in Las Vegas, Nashville and Philadelphia. What had primarily been an online business has morphed with changing tastes and times as people return to malls in search of the experiential.
“We’ve done very well in malls,” Prow said, adding that the company likes what it sees at The Westchester, with its proximity to New York City and Greenwich.
It also smells great, too.
