How Much is the Scent of Christmas Worth?
12.23.22
At the onset of World War II, Julius Sämann, a Jewish-German chemist, fled to the Alpine forests of Canada. Intrigued by the distinctive scent of pine resin, Sämann experimented with extracting essential oils from evergreen trees, going on to invent the iconic brand LITTLE TREES, the first air freshener designed specifically for cars.
Small yet potent, the tiny tree has fixated odor-repelling motorists for over seventy-years. As one construction worker explained his obsession, “When you’re working in a truck with a bunch of guys, believe me, it smells better than who’s in there.”
Still operating out of Watertown, New York, the company (Car-Freshner) has generated billions of sales, offering over 60 scents (fan favorites include Black Ice, Royal Pine, Vanillaroma, and New Car Scent), and appearing on the silver screen dozens of times (in “The Fisher King,” they put “one around Robin Williams’ neck to freshen him up. And in the serial murder movie ‘Seven,’ the killer leaves hundreds of little trees at the scene of a murder to mask the smell of a decomposing body.”)
Car-Freshner proudly identifies as a patent troll, zealously pursuing those who dare to imitate its cardboard shape (in 2018, the company was an early denouncer of Balenciaga, accusing it of “slavishly” copying Little Trees’ “shape, dimension, and overall appearance” in its $275 leather keychain line.)
Ultimately, however, the success of the company hinges not on litigation, but on the chemical weaponry of nature. These fragrant terpenes — the most diverse class of plant compounds — account for “the smoke of the Smoky Mountains, the fragrance of a Christmas tree, the freshness of a citrus peel, the highly varied aromas of cannabis, the turp in turpentine, and the sharp and floral notes in spices.”
In many ways, the journey of LITTLE TREES anticipated the larger trajectory of the modern fragrance industry: the abrupt exodus of the chemicals business from Germany (forming new hubs in Switzerland, the United States, and Japan), a sudden explosion of consumer interest in “woo-woo” aromatherapies, and the resurgence of loud, masculine, woody-based scents now ubiquitous in perfumery (as famed reviewer Luca Turin puts it, “See Tom Ford, with his seventy-four fragrances in big blocky bottles, manspreading across the fragrance floor so that no one else fits.”)
This week, we trace the history of the scent of Christmas, a holiday staple that has infiltrated our cars, our homes, and our perfumes, driving impressive growth in the naturals sector of fragrance as consumers increasingly embrace the romantic narratives and therapeutic benefits of essential oils.
From Forest to Fragrance
Conifers have long been associated with healing, cleanliness, and therapy. As early as classical antiquity, pine forests were identified as the ideal setting for the treatment of tuberculosis thanks to their mystical effect on air quality. “It is a well-known fact that forests planted solely with trees from which pitch and resin are extracted, are remarkably beneficial for patients suffering from phthisis or who are unable to recover their strength after a long illness,” wrote Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder in AD 77.
This tradition was revived in the 19th century, when the stench of modern cities sent wealthy dandies fleeing to German pine sanatoriums and European health resorts. One early alpine tourist, Dr. John Macpherson, published detailed accounts of his many visits to spas, including the popular Gernsbach located deep within the Black Forest. According to Macpherson, visitors were drawn by “its extract-of-pine baths and inhalation rooms, and its surrounding pine forests.” He also recorded a Victorian predecessor to the modern car freshener: “The balsam of the mountain pine, as prepared at Reicherhall, is said to be the most agreeable of all, and it is sufficient for purposes of inhalation to steep a piece of paper in it and hang it up in the room. It is a generator of ozone,” he explained.
Gradually, as the popularity of sanatoriums waned, doctors encouraged transplanting therapy from the forest to the home. As one scholar notes, “the holistic approach, … where the natural site was regarded as the very key to the patient’s recovery, was dissected into single elements and reproduced elsewhere.” In a movement led by military surgeon Dr. von Unterberger, patients were instructed to replace “the alpine environment with … small pine trees in containers and pine trees in branches in vases.” The use of essential oils was also encouraged to amplify and prolong the natural scent.
Pioneering fragrance hunter Roman Kaiser (employed by Givaudan, the largest buyer in the fragrance and flavour industry, accounting for ~25% of the sector’s market share) is partially responsible for reviving the popularity of naturals in fragrance. Spending forty years trekking the globe to analyze plants, Kaiser invented the headspace technology in the 1990s, a sustainable technique that allows scent samples to be collected without harming the plant or changing the quality of the scent.
One sample he discovered for Givaudan’s Naturals and ByNature product lines was the “olfactory ambience along a Mediterranean pine forest during a sunny afternoon,” produced “not from the needles, the cones or the wood, but from the sunshine-exposed resin” that released a “wonderful musky-woody note.” The chemical process has been reproduced, ad nauseum, among niche perfumers with varying rates of success. Luca Turin goes so far as to suggest that perfumery — where “refined rusticity ruled long before it became a visual fashion” — invented the lumbersexual, complete with “a massive Marx-and-Engels beard.”
Faithful iterations, such as London-based Beaufort’s Vi Et Armis, “bring the idea to a peak of perfection, given the British fondness for windswept shires dotted with low stone cottages harboring craggy poets puffing on pipes. Vi et Armis,” Turin concludes, “smells like an alchemist’s Christmas party, a dark, rich, swirling combination of peat fire and flambé spice pudding, with some cough syrup and fence paint thrown in for hygiene.” Less sophisticated interpretations, such as Cape Heartache, miss the mark entirely, representing, instead, “a townie’s idea of a fir forest, a sort of olfactory Albert Bierstadt painting, but without the romantic awe.”
Naturals vs Synthetics: Which is Greener?
Despite consumer perception that naturals are cleaner and more sustainable ingredients than synthetic chemicals, they come with their own troubling environmental and human costs. Perfumer Douglas Little — known for his outlandish collaborations with Goop — explains the pitfalls of natural-based ingredients: “Using only natural materials is incredibly challenging because they are wildly expensive, difficult to obtain, can vary from batch to batch, and do not appeal to a broad audience.” He adds: “And this is why I love them.”
Others are not as enchanted by the many sourcing and regulatory hurdles. When actress Michelle Pfeiffer dreamed of starting an organic and plant-based perfume line, Henry Rose, she quickly embraced synthetics over naturals. “The safety profile is hard to regulate since the chemical nature of ingredients found in nature can vary from tree to tree and farm to farm,” says Debi Theis, President of Henry Rose. “By using safe synthetics, we are able to eliminate most common allergens that would have naturally been present in aromatic oils extracted from botanical/plant sources.”
As environmental regulations increasingly monitor fragile supply chains in perfumery (particularly those of frankincense, jasmine, sandalwood, and vanillin), synthetics can play an important role in alleviating stress from overharvested sources. “It is generally much better for the environment if we are not harvesting whole populations of plants, flowers and trees to be turned into ingredients for the cosmetics industry,” says Lorraine Dallmeier, Chartered Environmentalist and CEO of online formulation school Formula Botanica.
And, ironically, naturals rarely smell like what consumers expect them to be. As New York cult perfumier Le Labo discovered (which methodically names each perfume after natural ingredients), baffled customers walk away bewildered when Rose 31 smells nothing like a rose.
“Here is the flaw in Le Labo’s grand plan: the major ingredient in a perfume is rarely ever what the perfume smells like,” observes one perfume writer. “Perfume is a cloak-and-dagger business — some ingredients are put into perfumes not for their scent but because they amplify all the other notes. These are called fixatives and they can be natural like vetiver or synthetic like Timbersilk. A perfume can have an overdose of a fixative and not smell of it whatsoever; it can have a tiny drop of rose essence and smell like you’ve drowned in Turkish Delight. The amount of an ingredient in a perfume has almost no correlation to the final scent. If you bake a cake with seventeen products and flour is the major ingredient you would still call it a cake, not Flour 17.”
DSM-Firmenich — another major player in the fragrance industry — hopes to bypass sourcing challenges with innovations in biotech to produce safe synthetics. In response to increasingly endangered supplies of sandalwood, for example, it launched Dreamwood in 2020, an “efficiently designed [alternative] … always available in supply and less expensive than natural sandalwood.” Other companies have explored using blockchain to track resin reserves in real time, or, in the case of India, have implanted microchips in sandalwood trees to dissuade poachers.
David Moltz, Co-Founder of Brooklyn-based perfume house D.S. & Durga, offers a practical litmus test for synthetic-shy consumers still harboring guilt: “The fantasy of clean is troublesome. Here are some unclean things that are toxic/carcinogenic: burnt food, potato chips, alcohol, red meat. We all do our best. If you eat burgers or fries, I think you’re fine to wear perfume.”
About Colbeck: Colbeck is a strategic lender that partners with companies during periods of transition, providing creative capital solutions to meet their evolving needs. You can reach the team at inquiries@colbeck.com.
