Hed: Themed Aromas

[Business Development]

Case Study: Dale Air Ltd.

Hed: Themed Aromas

Deck: Creating Smells for Museums, Zoos and Businesses

Summary: Dale Air Deodorising specializes in creating smells for museums, zoos, theme parks and business displays. Owner Frank Knight has created the odors of jaguar urine, boiler rooms, breweries and smoked fish. How does the technology work, and how does Dale Air market it?

Pull Quote: "This is not rocket science. What we've done is fill a niche that has been overlooked by perfumers and other manufacturers. I guess they don't think there's enough demand to make an abundant supply of pungent smells and the machines that dispense them." – Frank Knight, owner, Dale Air Ltd.

Not content with a replica dinosaur that moved and roared, officials at London's Natural History Museum wanted to reproduce the authentic smell of Tyrannosaurus rex. With one whiff, they thought, visitors could experience the pungent odors of a fearsome beast drenched in the blood of its prey, reeking of rotten meat and scarred with infected wounds.

The museum turned to Dale Air Deodorising, a company in Lytham, northern England, that specializes in creating distinct aromas for museums, haunted houses and businesses.

"We consulted paleontologists and experimented with a number of smells," says Frank Knight, owner of Dale Air, "but they were all so offensive that museum officials worried that visitors would be repulsed. Instead, they decided on a boggy, earthy scent that imitates the T-rex's swampy environment."

Catering to the sense of smell is a marketing tool museums and others are increasingly using on both sides of the Atlantic, says Knight, andmore than one curator has nosed out Dale Air's assortment of "themed aromas."

Knight, who runs the company with his wife Linda, has duplicated the smell of jaguar urine for the Chester (England) Zoo and recreated the scent of death for a World War I trench display at the Imperial War Museum in London. The Thames River Barrier Museum in London asked him to duplicate the river's smell centuries ago. "The river's stench was so bad that they would hang curtains dipped in lime to prevent the smell from entering the parliament building," Knight says.

At one time the company produced only pleasing aromas. Fred Dale, the company's founder, initially manufactured deodorizing machines and "pleasant scents" for sale to nursing homes and boarding houses. The new line of "nasty" aromas began when Dale received a request from the Jorvik Viking Centre in York, England, asking if it could make "latrine smells" for a new display. Frank and Linda Knight, who were distributors of cleaning and hygiene supplies to restaurants and institutions initially served as a distributor for Dale Air, bought the company in 1999 and dove into developing more unusual aromas.

Smells of the Past

"Most of the smells we produce for history-oriented museums are horrid," says Knight. "Those museums are designed to recreate the past, and many smells of the past were not so pleasant."

Themed aromas now represent the bulk of Dale Air's business, and sales of fragrant oils to nursing homes, hospitals and hotels compose "only a fraction" of the company's revenues.

Knight also expanded the company's line of aroma dispensing devices. The Vortex Standard Unit is best used for room freshening, he says. Just plug the cord into a wall, place the aroma bottle in the machine, and the vaporization system distributes the smell around the area. The Vortex Variable and the Ultra Vortex provide additional power. The Ultra Vortex is designed to fill a room the size of a small theater with desired scents.

"This is not rocket science," Knight says. "What we've done is fill a niche that has been overlooked by perfumers and other manufacturers. I guess they don't think there's enough demand to make pungent smells and the machines that dispense them."

Dale Air boasts a plethora of themed aromas, from such tantalizing smells as apple pie, gingerbread and chamomile to offensive odors such as those found in boiler rooms, fish markets and latrines. The company even reproduces the odor of smelly feet. Knight works with English perfumers to perfect some smells, but makes most of the aromas on his own with chemicals at his Lytham office. No high technology is required; Knight says perfumers rely on their "noses" to duplicate smells as he does himself.

"I've gained extensive knowledge about mixing the right chemicals to get the proper smells from the time I have spent with various perfumers," Knight says. "If a customer wants a smell I'm not familiar with, I will ask him to send a sample, and then I will consult with a perfumer."

The Sweet Smell of Success

When the Knights first bought Dale Air, they relied solely on word-of-mouth marketing. Nowadays, to enhance sales in England Knight attends conventions like the In-Store Marketing Show and the Museum and Heritage Show. He also places ads in British trade journals like In-Store Marketing Magazine.

"Our first goal, after buying the company, was to expand the line of dispensing units," Knight says. "Now that we've done that, we're searching for trade shows to attend around the world so we can get our name and capabilities known.

Media exposure has increased awareness of Dale Air's products in the United States. For example, in February Robert Dahl of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson read a New York Times article about Dale Air's contribution to the T-rex exhibit. This led Dahl to ask Knight to reproduce fragrances of flowers and aromas of animals found in the Sonora Desert for a "scent station."

One of the animals is a skunk. "The challenge will be getting a sample of the skunk's scent," Dahl says with a laugh, "without getting scented ourselves."

Once he receives Dahl's samples, Knight says, Dale Air will meet with a perfumer and perfect the requested aromas.

"Before I heard about Dale Air, I had contacted numerous perfume companies to see if they would duplicate these smells, but I didn't get a favorable response," Dahl says. "We want to give our visitors an idea of what the desert environment is really like, and the smells will be a valuable part of demonstrating that."

Another U.S. assignment has the distinctive aroma of a coal-burning stove wafting through the rooms and hallways of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City. Displays in the museum depict life in the 19th and early 20th centuries and smells add to the realism says collections manager Vin Lenza.

"When you walk into one of our apartments, we want it to seem like the families just stepped out for a few minutes," says Lenza. "The aromas help us accomplish that. Smells help visitors better understand what life was like for these families from different ethnic backgrounds."

Lenza contacted Knight to make a coal smell in a recreated 1878 apartment of a German family. Others aromas Lenza is considering include "strong coffee" for a 1916 apartment occupied by a Jewish family from Turkey, garlic for the kitchen of the 1935 Italian-American family and eucalyptus to duplicate the smell of medicine in the 1918 apartment of a man who died of tuberculosis.

"Originally, we bought bottles of scented oils to create an orange smell in the Italian-American family's apartment," Lenza says, "but the scent did not remain strong long and the bottles had to be refilled often. We've found that (Dale Air's) machines and aromas are effective because the smells are authentic and they last for a long time."

Smelling Profits

Themed aromas are not limited to recreating the past, Knight says. He believes they can be powerful marketing tools in stores, trade shows, even amusement parks.

Dale Air created a "musty" smell for a haunted house at Alton Towers, an amusement park in England. The response was so favorable that Knight decided to place an advertisement on Hauntworld.com, a Web site for haunted house operators and suppliers. He received several inquiries and is talking to haunted-house operators in the United States and England.

For Associated/ACC International, a Chicago-based company that installs flooring for retail chains like Foot Locker and Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Dale Air produced tropical scents for a Hawaiian-themed trade show display.

Currently, Knight is particularly interested in providing themed aromas to food manufacturers for use in grocery store displays like the Thai curry scent Dale Air developed for a Hong Kong company that uses the aroma in stores throughout that country.

"I think customers would be more enticed to buy certain food products if they could get an idea of what they smell like," Knight says. "These smells would also add to the ambiance of the grocery store. It would make a visit to the grocery store more of a welcome experience than a dreaded chore."

At a Glance

Name: Dale Air Ltd.

URL:

Location: Lytham, England

Founders: Fred Dale

Founded: 1973

Industry: Manufacturing

Employees: 3

Revenues: Undisclosed