Lisa Wilson, at her Scent & Strategy headquarters in Mill Valley. [Photo by Duncan Garrett Photography]
If 2024 had a smell, it would be something ocean-like, watery, fresh, clean.
“It’s sort of a metaphor in a way for wanting to get over all of the negativity and wanting to move on into a new time. To just breathe fresh air again and be optimistic,” says Mill Valley resident Lisa Wilson.
Wilson should know. A “nose” whose business, Scent & Strategy, marks its 10th anniversary this year, has created fragrances for such businesses as Bijan, The Gap, The Disney Store, Yankee Candle Company, Method, Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn, West Elm, Williams Sonoma, Cremo, and Anthropologie, among numerous others. In other words, it’s likely that when someone lights a candle, dabs on some perfume, shampoos their hair, throws a load of laundry into the washing machine, or slathers on body lotion, there’s a bit of Wilson present.
Although world-renowned perfumer Mandy Aftel is based in the East Bay, she and Wilson don’t do the same kind of work. In fact, there’s no one else in the North Bay who does quite what Wilson does—help develop fragrance products for her clients.
It’s not what she planned to do. “I kind of fell into it,” she says.
Wilson’s background is in marketing, sales and advertising. She became intrigued by fragrance when she was hired to market Prince Matchabelli perfume. But after a while, she didn’t want to just sell fragrances—she wanted to develop them. “I wasn’t satisfying that creative part of me.”
Wilson didn’t undergo the lengthy schooling to learn about fragrances as master perfumers must, but she was trained by them. All she has to do is take a sniff and she can tell what scents are in it.
“It’s almost like computer language. Once you smell an ingredient, you keep it in your brain forever,” she says.
Fragrance has a long, storied existence, dating back to the ancient Egyptians, who made fragrances with ingredients from plants and animals. According to Sarah Everts, author of The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration, “humans have consistently lobbed on perfume to overwhelm our body’s odors. Wearing perfume wasn’t just about fooling others about our own stink. Humans have also worn perfume as protection, as a scented distraction from the malodor of others and also as a prophylactic barrier from disease, which was long thought to be spread by bad air. Perfume kept in jeweled rings and pendants could be brought to the nose when accosted by unpleasant smells; it formed an aromatic wall.”
After working for other companies, including the largest fragrance company in the world, Givaudan, for decades, Wilson decided she wanted to call her own shots, which lead to the birth of Scent & Strategy.
“I’m able to walk that fine line between being an expert with my clients and also knowing what’s going to be commercial and sell versus having that passion of a perfumer who is concerned about his perfect fragrance composition,” she says. “I’m an extension of a brand.”
Which means she often has to talk a client out of bad ideas. “Before we even start any work with perfumery, we have to identify what is our strategy, what are we trying to accomplish, and we stick with that,” she says. “The moment the client’s personal opinion interferes with what that strategy is, we start to get into trouble.”
Take something like a fragranced candle. It’s a lot more complicated than something that just looks nice and smells nice. Which company is selling the candle and who’s buying it from the company matter. “If it’s something you’re selling at Target or Walmart, you need to make sure you are creating a fragrance that will be successful for that audience. So that might not reflect your own personal taste,” she says.
A candle for an upscale store like Neiman Marcus or a boutique shop would be an entirely different thing, what’s known as “niche distribution,” which can take into account personal preferences. Like when Gwyneth Paltrow released a $75 candle that she sold on her Goop website titled, “This Smells Like My Vagina,” in 2020 and, more recently, “This Smells Like My Orgasm” and “Hands Off My Vagina,” a fundraiser for reproductive rights.
“It got people talking,” Wilson says with a roll of her eyes. “Was it about the smell of the candle? Probably not. It was about the concept.”
Smell is what matters to Wilson, although all of her work is behind the scenes. There isn’t a body wash, perfume, or scented candle with Wilson’s name on it. “You’re not going to get an award necessarily for doing that kind of work,” she says.
Still, with a decade of her own company under her belt, Wilson gets to be picky about who she works with.
“I love putting something out in the world that’s affordable to people, and that makes them happy and that gives them a moment in their day to just enjoy,” she says. “But anything I work on, there has to be a reason, it has to be really well researched and be very strategic.”
Some of Wilson’s new clients include Billie, which started as a woman’s razor company and recently expanded into body care, and Virtue Labs, the first haircare brand that uses pure human keratin, not plant or animal keratin, and that has been embraced by celebrities such as Jennifer Garner, Vanessa Kirby, Charlize Theron and Kristin Stewart.
Working with Virtue Labs, she helped coin what’s called “functional fragrances”—fragrances that contain essential oils, extracts and aromatic ingredients that, in this case, not only benefit each type of hair type— if there’s cypress in it, it’s to smooth hair strands while lemon helps to strengthen them—but also address what more consumers are demanding nowadays, ingredients and company practices that are sustainable and aligned with their values, what they call being “virtuous.”
“Traceability—where the oils come from, how the farmers are treated—is very important,” Wilson says. “I only work with suppliers who I trust and know that they have those relationships with the growers and also, they have a supply chain they can guarantee.”
Driven in part by Gen Z consumers, “clean” beauty has become one of the fastest-growing categories in personal care, according to Fast Company.
According to a 2022 survey conducted for the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, a typical adult uses 12 personal care products—shampoo, soap, conditioner, deodorants and more—every day, and 10% use more than 25 products daily. The survey also found that a typical adult is exposed to 15 fragrance chemicals a day. Since fragrance is an “umbrella term,” potentially hiding nearly 4,000 chemicals, the EWG notes, transparency is essential.
Wilson believes that, too.
“People will say, ‘Oh, I want all organic’—and then when they find out it doesn’t smell as good and you can only manufacture it in a certain kind of facility and that’s very difficult to do. So usually they say, ‘OK, let’s look at the next tier down,’ which may be all natural, but in the West there’s no kind of standard. What does that mean?” she says. “So, I look at the European Union, where there are different kinds of standards that we can at least tie to, so we are transparent to what we are using. As long as you tell your consumer what you’re doing, let them make the choice, that’s what I believe is the most important thing to do. Consumers are smart. They’re taking the time to do the research on their own, and transparency is the name of the game.”
“Influencers will pick up body washes of ours or fine fragrances of ours and make comments about how they last or how they smell or what they remind them of, and it can absolutely drive a brand and make it super-successful with nothing you’ve done except for the quality of the product,” she says.
Coming up with a fragrance isn’t always easy. Sometimes it can take as little as six months. “That’s good,” she says with a laugh. It took three years to come up with a body wash scent for Cremo, a men’s grooming company, that launched at Target called “Golden Amber,” with notes of red currant, pineapple, ambergris, and moss.
“It was all about what we call the sillage, a word you use to describe a fine fragrance that when someone walks by it’s what’s left, the trail,” she says. “This particular fragrance we created is so complex and so iconic, anyone who smells it and knows anything about the uber-niche fragrance movement might understand the structure of this fragrance, but that sillage was so difficult to get at the price point.”
The price point in this case retails for $12.19 for 16 fluid ounces, but, as Wilson states, “it was crafted after something that’s typically $375.”
That, too, is part of the trend in fragrances, what’s called “dupe” culture—taking high-end fragrances and making something similar but much more affordable.
Another trend is fragrance layering—people wanting to own their own fragrance by wearing several fragrances at the same time. “To me, it started smelling like a soup, so I’m not a big fan of it.”
Also popular among young fragrance enthusiasts is smelling peculiar—think latex, gunpowder, biscuits, even blood. A hashtag on TikTok, #Perfumetok, with 6.7 billion views, is popular with people looking for “bizarre, outlandish and even intentionally off-putting notes,” according to the New York Times. It’s not something Wilson has worked on, but she understands the concept— fragrance is an expression of individualism.
As she marks the 10th year of her business, Wilson is looking forward to what’s ahead and pursuing things that bring her joy. One is expanding her knowledge and work in essential oils as well as working toward becoming an herbalist, learning about how plants can be used for health.
“Naturals are really what I love,” says Wilson, who has a certificate in international aromatherapy in the French style, which focuses on the prevention of and treating diseases. She’s excited to be creating essential oil blends for a Marin-based company’s new line of products.
The global essential oil market was worth $10.69 billion in 2022 and is projected to hit $21.54 billion by 2031, according to Straits Research.
Another thing that brings her joy is teaching others about fragrances, and that includes working with Labyrinth Made Goods, a social justice soy candle company founded by the YMCA of McLean County in Bloomington, Illinois, that helps formerly incarcerated women learn essential skills, gain confidence and give them a path to employment.
On her first visit with the company in 2019, she set up a fragrance training, which included smelling aldehyde, the top note for the popular perfume Channel No. 5. “I don’t like [aldehyde], but some people love it. And we were all smelling it and the woman sitting next to me, who absolutely was giving me the side eye and did not want to be there, and I asked, ‘What does this remind you of?’ and she said, ‘Jail’ because it smells like metal and the laundry room,” says Wilson, who has been mentoring her ever since.
But there also were scents that brought back positive memories, such as the smell of a grandmother’s garden.
From there, Labyrinth Made Goods created the fragrance for their first candle, “Serenity,” launched in 2020.
“It was one of the most transformative meetings I’d ever been in in my life,” she says. “What I am most proud of all the work I’ve ever done is that I’m finally able to use my experience in the fragrance industry to give back.”
“We would never have been able to do what we’re doing without her,” says Liz German, CEO of the YMCA of McLean County. “She’s been key to getting our business started and moving forward. It has been such a great experience. She’s amazing.”
