Firmenich Fragrance House

Firmenich is the fragrance house that mark. has a partnership with.  It is Firmenich that creates all the fragrance for us!  The interns got to visit this company and explore what our relationship entails!

Look what was waiting for us after we arrived!  Tons of mini cupcakes!

Firmenich is a family owned company, that has been passed down five generations since 1895.  One year, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in musk research!  Pretty awesome!!

In order to "nurture the passion of fragrance," Firmenich has created a fragrance website called OsMoz.com. Check it out!  It is packed with tons of information about fragrances and scents and how they come together to create a finished product.  They even sell perfuming sets, so people can learn to educate themselves.  I thought about purchasing one of these kits--they look so cool!  

Firmenich has 80 perfumers worldwide.  A perfumer is like a chef--but one who adds and plays with molecules instead of ingredients.   A typical perfume has about 100 different ingredients.  30 is considered very few, while 600 is considered excessive--making a perfume requires tons of patience to add all these ingredients. 

I thought it was pretty interesting that Harry Fremont (a perfumer who works for Firmenich) was the creator of Viva La Juicy, Vera Wang Princess, and mark.'s Jewel.  (These are all favorites of mine!  Thank you Harry!)  These are all oriental fragrances.

We even had the opportunity to meet the perfumer who created mark.'s Rio Instant Vacation line.  Gil Clavien, sat with us and let us smell the different versions of Rio Rhythms that she created and presented to mark.  It was so cool to smell how the scent changed.  It started as a very green fragrance, but by adding apple, Rio Rhythms changed into a fresher frag!  Perfection.  Gil also sat with us and let us smell different scents in all of the different fragrance families.  The families or categories are: floral, woody, oriental, chypre, and citrus.  By smelling these, we were beginning our fragrance training.

These were the scent cards we got to smell! Tons of them right?!

Here are other fragrances Firmenich has created:

Here are some facts that I thought were pretty cool:

The top US Feminine Fragrances in the Market in 2009 were:

Coco Madenoiselle (Chypre)

Beautiful (Floral)

Light Blue (Woody)

Chanel No 5 (Floral)

Cashmere Mist (Oriental)

Pleasures (Floral)

Viva La Juicy (Oriental)

Ed Hardy (Floral)

Happy (Floral)

Sensuous (Woody)

The top fragrances in:

2005 were Floral...in

2006 were Woody...in

2007 were Oriental...in

2008 were Chypre...in

2009 were Citrus

As we left Firmenich, we were given a sample bottle of the newest mark. fragrance that will launch soon.  It is called Celebrate and is BY FAR my favorite mark. fragrance yet.  I can't wait for it to be available so I can buy a full size of my own!

After this field trip, I seriously considered becoming a perfumer!  It was so cool to hear from Firmenich and how they work with mark.  I was one of my favorite field trips yet!