‘It’s the brand speaking to you’: the scent firms making smells for Subway, Abercrombie and more

As brick-and-mortar retail stores compete with e-commerce, chains are spending heavily to immerse customers in bespoke fragrances

When Dallas Pratt worked at an outpost of Aesop in an outdoor shopping mall outside Chicago, one of her and her co-workers' favorite ways of drawing in new customers was making a concoction they called sidewalk tea". They would put a few drops of scented lotion in a cup of hot water, and then they would pour it onto the slab of concrete outside the shop. As the water evaporated, the smell of the lotion would fill the air.

It drew people in," Pratt tells me. They asked questions. They spent time." And, crucially, they bought stuff.