Zsolt Zólyomi: “A fragrance can be decisive in a business deal”

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2023/5

Fragrances and business success

Mr Zólyomi believes that fragrances have their own personalities, but if he doesn’t meet the actual person he is preparing a new fragrance for – and more importantly if he can’t smell their skin personally – then he will design the fragrance for the average of the target population. Brands know very well that the US market, Europe, Russia and the Arab world all want different products. Interestingly the Covid pandemic didn’t do harm to the perfume industry, the segment has even managed to expand.

Zsolt Zólyomi perfumer

Szilvia Krizsó asked the perfumer whether he has customers who want perfumes that can make them more successful in the business life. He told they do have such solutions and also spoke about scent marketing. A good example of this is when one is coming up from the metro in Paris and smells that delicious croissant scent: we simply can’t resist and will buy something from the bakery – actually the croissant isn’t made there, only a special fragrance, developed by specialists such as Zsolt Zólyomi, is sprayed into the air at the right places of the metro station. The perfumer explained that he became interested in scents during secondary school, but soon realised that there is no institution in Hungary where he could study it. Finally he began his studies at a specialist school in Versailles, which was founded by Guerlain and only admitted 12 students in that year from the whole world in the given year.

Smelling it all

Szilvia Krizsó asked the perfumer whether it was disturbing to be able to smell every scent. He said he had no problem with that; he has been collecting all that scent information since his childhood, so when he closes his eyes, the world is still there for him. During the Covid pandemic he wasn’t afraid of catching the virus; he even developed a small smelling kit for the situation of losing his sense of smell, as it has been proven by scientists that the old skills can be brought back quicker by practicing.

“I’ve been collecting plenty olfactory information since I was a kid, so if I close my eyes, I have the whole world of smells.”

His knowledge is so big that he can already compose a fragrance for a customer without smelling, just because he knows the chemistry behind it. Mr Zólyomi had an American perfumer friend, who sadly passed away during the pandemic. Even though this man used to be a heavy smoker, he could tell which element was missing from a certain fragrance, and could instruct its creators what to do to make that scent work. The Hungarian perfumer is still only in the middle of his career, but even if his senses start to deteriorate, he will have the necessary knowledge and skills to stay at the top of his game. //