Hamburg - A good sense of smell is essential to a perfumer, a person who creates scents for everything from laundry detergent and shower gel to dish soap and perfume itself. His nose is by far his most important tool.
"It is not necessary to have an extremely good nose, but a perfumer should be able to recognize a particular scent in a blind test," said Marc vom Ende, a perfumer at fragrance maker Symrise in Holzminden, Germany.
There are only about 500 people in the world like vom Ende, and he is one of about three dozen in Germany. Their employers typically are producers of the fragrant substances.
"The perfumers are the artists who do the creating in these companies," said Bettina Muermann, director of the German association of producers of fragrant substances.
There has long been a need for the skills of perfumers beyond companies where fine fragrances are produced.
"Scents also are added to heating oil and diesel fuel," said Han Paul Bodifee, head of the French perfume industry association and the Grasse Institute of Perfumery, one of only a few perfumery schools in the world.
And, to understand the role scents play in business, it's important to understand that the beloved scent of a new car is not the result of the simple assembly of its various parts. The smell has, in part at least, the work of a perfumer behind it.
Another niche among creators of scents is creating specific smells in public places, Muermann explained.
"It's not just about getting rid of unpleasant smells in these public areas," she said. Smells can be useful in influencing moods or states of mind. Light citrus scents have been found to have positive influences on learning and thus have been used in classrooms and lecture halls.
There are more than 2,500 basic ingredients available to scent makers to come up with new fragrances. That includes about 400 natural substances, essential oils and extracts, said Bodifee. The rest are synthetic. This means the job of a perfumer is always the same.
"He must mix a number of products together and come up with something that has nothing to do with the basic ingredients," Bodifee said.
It's not easy to get an education as a perfumer. Even large countries like Germany don't have accredited programmes that lead to a certification in the field. Companies run their own education programmes in order to cover their own needs, said vom Ende.
This provides sufficient qualification for work in an organization that educates perfumers. In addition the path to becoming a chemical laboratory worker can lead through the fragrance substance industry.
Those who prefer to attend a school to qualify as a perfumer must go to France and pay the cost of the education themselves. There are numerous institutes in France, the motherland of the fragrance industry, where young people can get an education as a perfumer and develop contacts in the field.
"Young people must have a certain level of education, be creative and must also be able to speak English," said Bodifee. The course takes nine months, and a large part of the time is spent in the industry, but there's also a lot of training for the nose.
"At the beginning, it's all about smelling, smelling and more smelling," said Bodifee, who founded the school in the fragrance capital Grasse in southern France. As soon as students learn the smells of the basic fragrance ingredients, they start to mix them.
Vom Ende compares the process to the visual arts.
"Just like a painter has different colours to paint a picture, we also have our basic ingredients," he said.
