And yet most people associate a scent, or even a feeling, with clean, freshly washed laundry. Here, perfumers design the Henkel fragrance cosmos and have been developing signature scents for detergents, shampoos, cleaning products, and soaps since Marc-Steffen Schiedel, a long-term Henkel employee with a doctorate in chemistry, has been the head of the Henkel Fragrance Center for four years.
Why are fragrances in products so important? A certain scent can evoke positive memories. For example, lavender may take you back to your last holiday, or the smell of Persil can remind you of moments in childhood with your grandparents.
Perfumes are crucial for Henkel in order to reach the hearts of consumers as well as convey performance factors such as purity and cleanliness. Persil has had its signature scent since , before that the detergent remained odorless. Manuela Materne knows what it means to create a fragrance: The Henkel employee is one of only around 1, perfumers worldwide. But as she continues, she conjures the image of a composer, creating a symphony of top, heart, and base notes.
First, she has the scent for a product in mind, then she combines the different notes using a computer. Lastly, the new fragrance is created, made of between 50 and ingredients. Fragrances play an essential role in our product experience. This is because they can enhance product performance and evoke a vast range of emotions within us. However, clothes often end up lying in wardrobes for several weeks and then still need to smell fresh.
According to Marc-Steffen, the main research objective is to maintain the fragrance, especially the top note, on clothes and textiles for a longer period of time. The fragrance components are all made up of small molecules.
