Forward Thinking: A Scented Home

Candles indicative of the current times, ethereal concepts, outdoor-inspired fragrances, fast-food scents, environmentally conscious products and smart diffusive technology are driving air care innovation.

BY AMY MARKS-MCGEE, Trendincite LLC; amy@trendincite.com

According to Fortune Business Insights, published in March 2020, the global home fragrance market size is expected to reach $7.96 billion by 2026, exhibiting a CAGR of 4.6% during the forecast periodDisplay footnote number:a. The NPD Group reported that first-quarter 2020 U.S. prestige fragrance sales dropped 13% compared to 2019, totaling $655.3 million. However, growth was seen in home fragrance categories such as candles (up 8% from 2019), diffusers (up 5%), home scents (up 4%) and ancillary gift sets (up 4%)Display footnote number:b.

The NPD Group noted that candles are up not just in the United States, but globally. According to a May 4, 2020 New York Times article, home fragrance sales have experienced a surge in demand as a direct result of COVID-19. For example, Diptyque’s sales in the home category have tripled since March, and D.S. & Durga’s candles now make up 40% of its direct business while about 90% of Nest New York’s sales now come from home fragrance, up from 75% before the pandemicDisplay footnote number:c.

Candles indicative of the current times, ethereal concepts, outdoor-inspired fragrances, fast-food scents, environmentally conscious products and smart diffusive technology are driving air care innovation…………………………………………….
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Smart Diffusive Technology

Technology is continually evolving, and the latest activity in air care is being driven by smartphone-enabled diffusers.

Air Wick introduced the Essential Mist smart diffuser with Bluetooth technology and a mobile app. Consumers can customize their scent experience with programmable scent schedules, adjustable scent intensity settings, refill reminders and the ability to purchase refills directly from their smartphone. The Aroma range starter pack is available in a Happiness (pineapple, peach and wild mint) fragrance and includes one diffuser, batteries and a fragrance refill. Additional fragrances in the range formulated for different moods include Sleep (lavender, eucalyptus and sage) and Unwind (jasmine, tea tree and lotus blossom) made with an exclusive blend of natural essential oils. Fragrances from the Air Wick Essential Mist collection include Cinnamon & Crisp Apple, Fresh Water Breeze, Lavender & Almond Blossom, Mandarin & Sweet Orange and Peony & Jasmine variants and are compatible with the smart diffuser.
Similarly, Nest New York launched a Smart Home Fragrance Diffuser powered by Pura that connects to a smartphone, is Alexa-compatible and enables user to set a scent schedule, swap between scents and adjust intensity. The starter set comes with Bamboo and Grapefruit fragrance vials, which are offered in scent refills, in addition to Cedar Leaf & Lavender and Moroccan Amber fragrances. Airzai released Aroma, a premium smart home fragrance diffuser with an app that is voice-enabled and can be managed by Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. The smart diffuser can schedule fragrance preferences, adjust the fragrance intensity in low, medium and high settings and create ambient lighting. Australian Sandalwood, Mediterranean Blossoms and Santorini Fig are the three current aromas offered.
In February 2020, Candle Touch launched a Kickstarter campaign. Described as the “world’s first smart-connected real-flame candle,” the Bluetooth-enabled scented candle works with a password-protected app and uses a device with an electronic base that is connected to a scented coconut wax candle and sends a current up a wire to ignite the cotton wick. According to the brand, a candle can last up to 40 hours, and the app works from as far as 60 feet away and can light up 10 candles simultaneously. Candle Touch is offered in scents such as Amber and Clove, Avocado and Mint, Grapefruit and Cardamom, Lime and Grapefruit, and White Tea and Ginger. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, at the end of March, Candle Touch closed the campaign.

At the Consumer Electronics Show 2020 (CES), Tel Aviv-based startup company introduced Moodify, an “active scent” car-like air freshener, which is designed “to alter human behavior, improve performance, enhance feelings of well-being and even increase vehicular safety.” Moodify White is the brand’s first scented product, and it “eliminates perceptions of bad odors by temporarily affecting how the brain interprets smell. It confuses the brain with custom scents in the same way that a white noise machine dulls unpleasant sounds by saturating the space with a neutral audio background.” Moodify Blue, Moodify Green and Moodify Red scents are all under development. The Moodify Blue is meant to calm an individual down and reduce stress and aggression, which is being formulated to replicate pheromones found in human tears. Moodify Green is designed to increase alertness and awareness and is based on the pheromones found in the sweat generated by humans in fearful situations, while the Moodify Red is engineered to wake you up “100% of the time [with] a very good possibility to save lives.”

Follow your nose for safer driving

,,Moodify wants you to follow your nose to safer driving,,

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/moodify-fragrances-safer-driving-ces-2020/

An Israeli company says it’s figured out how to use special fragrances to block foul odors and even alter human behavior.

Flying cars, a nuclear reactor in every home and smell-o-vison are a few innovations our forebears in the 1950s probably thought were just around the proverbial corner. Unfortunately, or perhaps luckily, none of these things have come to pass yet, though this may no longer be the case for that last item.

Moodify, a startup company based in Tel Aviv, Israel, says it has figured out how to use scents to alter human behavior, improve performance, enhance feelings of wellbeing and even increase vehicular safety. This sounds like the stuff of science fiction or the gimmick of a bad romantic comedy, but while speaking at a private media event at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Yigal Sharon, the company’s CEO and co-founder, said it’s all backed by scientific fact.

Founded in 2017, Moodify draws on extensive development and testing. “Everything we bring to the table is backed by 10 years of research” conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, Sharon said.

How is this all said to work? Well, it’s a bit complicated, but here’s the gist. Certain aromas deliver unique signals to the brain that cause humans to react without even consciously knowing it.

Sharon said the work he and his company have done has resulted in the creation of various formulations, each with a specific purpose. So far, these are Moodify White, Moodify Blue, Moodify Green and Moodify Red. Think of these as perfumes that can directly alter human behavior.

First out of the gate is Moodify White, which is launching at this year’s CES. It’s designed to change how humans perceive odors. Like a volume knob, it’s supposed to essentially turn down the intensity of undesirable smells.

As a demonstration, Sharon handed out some small, air freshenerlike fobs infused with this Moodify White. When they eventually go on sale, he estimates these passive diffusers will sell for $25 each and last a month. Anecdotally, after opening the one I was given, one or two sniffs did seem to cancel out the cleaning-solution smell of my Vegas hotel room, but of course, we’d need to do real testing to render a verdict.

Sharon said Moodifier White can be used to make ride-hailing vehicles and rental cars more pleasant or to reduce tobacco-smoke aromas indoors — perhaps in buses, public spaces and even on airplanes. He also noted it’d be great for dealerships, to help reduce the perception of unwanted aromas in used cars.

Moving on, this is where things start getting a little weird. “Moodify Blue can calm you down,” Sharon said, reducing stress and aggression. Unfortunately, compared with the Moodify White formulation, “The Blue will cost more because this is a very specialized signal, which has to be synthesized,” though oddly enough, it’s a copy of pheromones found in human tears. He said he hopes it will hit the market in six to eight months, possibly as an oil you can rub on your skin if you feel anxious. “This has huge potential,” he said.

Read more….. https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/moodify-fragrances-safer-driving-ces-2020/

Moodify and Valeo Collaborate to Bring an End to Car Malodor

Las Vegas, January 7, 2020. Valeo and Moodify, an Israeli company that develops advanced scent solutions for improved personal performance and well-being, are announcing their first collaboration. Together, they will bring to market a ground breaking solution to car malodor.

The solution is based on the smart diffusion of a special scent, Moodify White, based on 10 years of research at Israel’s top technology research institute. Moodify White is especially attractive because it effectively masks the perception of foul smells in cars, including cigarettes, mold, and decay. Moodify White is made entirely of environmentally friendly, hypoallergenic, and non-intrusive compounds. The first version of Moodify White will be released in early 2020, and will be available in samples in Valeo and Moodify’s exhibit area at CES.

Prof. Dr. Georges de Pelsemaeker, Health and Wellbeing Director at Valeo, commented: “Combining Valeo’s deep knowledge of the automotive industry, and its expertise in cabin air quality solutions, together with Moodify’s technological capacity, enables us to bring to market an ultimate solution to bad smell in cars, a problem that pains the entire automotive supply chain”.“Moodify White is the harbinger of the digital scent revolution. For hundreds of years, scent problems were addressed with a simple add-more-perfume approach. We bring neuroscience and chemo-signals to the table. With our unique technology, any scent solution could be tailor-made as easily as printing documents.” Said Yigal Sharon, CEO of Moodify. “I am fortunate to collaborate with Valeo, which gave its indispensable automotive domain expertise and professionalism, and thankful to our investors Toyota AI Ventures and Next Gear Ventures that back us and make this happen.”

Moodify Raises $1.6M Funding for Advanced Functional ScentsShare Article

Moodify raises $1.6M Funding for Advanced Functional Scents Company to present at IAA Frankfurt its joint solution with partner Valeo

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (PRWEB) SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

Moodify, an Israeli company that is developing advanced scent solutions for improved performance and well-being, today announced $1.6M funding from lead investor Next Gear Ventures, with participation from Toyota AI Ventures. The funding brings the total investment in Moodify to $2.3M.

“This investment will enable us to execute on our plan to establish the company as a leader in the market, while continuing to develop Moodify scents,” said Yigal Sharon, co-founder and CEO of Moodify. “The vote of confidence by Toyota AI Ventures, a leading investor in the mobility space, and Next Gear Ventures, one of the champions of automotive innovation, further indicates that there is a real need for Moodify’s groundbreaking technology. Many industries have started to realize the power and significance of smell, and we are very excited to be a pioneer in this novel field.”

Moodify’s scent technology harnesses the power of implicit and explicit smells by emitting safe, non-intrusive signals that have an immediate impact on emotional and physiological condition, for example, by masking bad odors, reducing stress, or waking up someone who is drowsy.

Moodify’s active scents are based on over 10 years of research on chemo-signals at the top science institute in Israel.

“We are very proud to deepen our partnership with Moodify after working closely together with the founders for the past 6 months through Drive Innovation Hub,” said Tal Cohen, General Partner of Next Gear Ventures and Drive TLV. “The company’s solutions for safety and well-being generate great interest not only from leading players in the mobility ecosystem but also from several other major industries offering numerous use cases. Although very powerful, using advanced scent technologies to solve-real world problems has very rarely been successfully achieved at scale, but we believe Moodify has great potential do so.”

“Our mission at Toyota AI Ventures is to explore new innovations, and so we’re excited by the potential of Moodify’s functional fragrance technology, for automotive applications and other use-cases,” said Jim Adler, founding managing director of Toyota AI Ventures. “Moodify’s scent solutions are based on years of scientific research that tap into the powerful impact that smell has on our sense of well-being – whether to calm us, alert us, or enhance the perception of our environment. It’s fascinating to experience the Moodify scents firsthand, and we look forward to their products becoming widely available.”

Moodify’s first product, Moodify White, will be exhibited at the IAA show in Frankfurt this September in the VALEO booth. VALEO, a leader in automotive interior air quality, wants to complete its product portfolio with a solution that removes the negative impact of interior bad odors, and had teamed up with Moodify to develop an innovative product.

About Moodify
Co-founded in 2017 by Yigal Sharon and Dr. Yaniv Mama, Moodify develops unique active scents that enable people to improve their performance, enhance their well being and increase their safety. Based on more than a decade of research at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, Moodify’s scents affect the olfactory sense in a non-invasive and safe manner. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Moodify was selected for Capsula, a TAU & the Israeli Government accelerator, and is a part of the Renault-Nissan Innovation Lab (TLV CityZone) and DriveTLV innovation Center for Smart Mobility.

About Next Gear Ventures
Next Gear Ventures is a leading smart mobility focused Israeli VC fund investing in startups at the forefront of smart mobility revolution. Next Gear is leveraging its strategic relationship with Drive TLV with its global mobility partners network to identify, mold and work with Israel’s top startups. Next Gear ventures and Drive have became the go to address for top early stage Israeli startups. 

About Toyoya AI Ventures
Toyota AI Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage startups from around the world. Toyota’s first standalone VC fund, Toyota AI Ventures focuses on investments in areas like artificial intelligence, data, cloud, mobility, and robotics. For more information, please visit https://www.toyota-ai.ventures.

Digital transformation & AI in fragrance

Software is eating the world and now it has recently begun smelling it as well. The fragrance industry is starting to go through deep digital transformation processes that address its core competencies, and naturally so, is thus very affected by artificial intelligence (AI). In contrast to information-based industries such as finance and insurance, fragrance took longer to undergo digital transformation because entry barriers for startups and innovation, in general, are higher. CapEx (capital expenditures) involving chemical compounds and labs, together with higher OpEx (operational expenditure) for interdisciplinary talent, make it less susceptible to disruption.

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Fragrance is more difficult to digitize because there is less academic applied olfaction research work offering technologies ripe for commercialization; and because olfactory nomenclature is limited and less articulated than other senses. The latter not only creates difficulties in generating data sets for AI but also makes it challenging to have AI talent reach the profound subject matter understanding that is so necessary to develop adequate solutions. In addition, the widely common (and justified) perception of perfumery as an art and craft creates a basic distrust for AI solutions in fragrance.

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AI in Fragrance

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Nonetheless, AI is beginning to penetrate fragrance. Similarly to other industries, it started from applications that are not unique to fragrance, such as analyzing consumer behavior as recorded in e-commerce transactions and social media for the purpose of creating fragrance products that sell better. But also recent years innovations in machine learning, bioinformatics, and drug discovery have posed an opportunity to develop AI models that touch the core of fragrance design and formulation and can actually make computers sense and articulate olfactory perception. Publicity of such innovation made stakeholders in fragrance more open to risk resources for progress. The integration of AI in core fragrance capabilities manifests in several types of applications: formula-to-brief recommendation, formulation, sensing, and new molecule design. The formula to-brief recommendation is the ability to match existing fragrance formulas to new briefs. It enables fragrance houses to match formulas out of their 50,000+ formula portfolios to new customer briefs that could benefit existing non-exclusive formulas and enable fragrance houses to continue monetizing them.

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Originally published on Perfumer & Flavorist

Scent digitization startup Moodify raises $8 million from Procter & Gamble, Toyota

The Israeli company has developed a platform in collaboration with leading Weizmann Institute researchers that enables molecular-level accurate control in the design of scent

Moodify, an Israeli startup that develops technology for the digitization of scent, announced on Monday that it has recently completed raising $8 million in equity financing. CPG giant Procter & Gamble is a key investor in the round. Other investors include Toyota Ventures, OurCrowd, Next Gear Venture Partners, and Taisho Pharmaceuticals.

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