“There are more astronauts alive than there are perfumers”: the complex supply chains of scents

While the natural world is fecund with a dazzling diversity of smells, the landscape of scents in our daily lives is far less organic. A handful of tightly-held fragrance companies and an extremely small guild of perfumers carefully craft the scents that go into every product we purchase, from the scent of clean laundry in our detergents to the orchestrated beauty of scents that make up a modern perfume. Our memories are — without too much exaggeration — controlled by roughly 600 people globally. Where do those scents come from though, and why are people increasingly concerned about understanding the ingredients that make up spectrum of smells that waft over us every day? Returning to “Securities” for our second of two episodes on the science of smell, CEO and founder of Lux-backed Osmo Alex Wiltschko joins host Danny Crichton to talk about the extraordinarily intricate supply chains and the astonishingly pricey essences that go into making our products distinctive to our olfactory system. We cover the dynamics of the fragrance industry, the incredible scale of land required to make scents today, how perfumers perform their craft, the endlessly complicated supply chains of these products, why we have so few alternatives to natural scents, how climate change is causing dramatic shifts in ingredient prices, and finally, a bit on the future of green chemistry.