Scents and Sensibility

Good evening! Let me catch you up :o)

Yesterday was yet another great field trip! At mark. (like most all brands who sell fragrances), there are fragrance houses that are used to create the perfect fragrance to sell. I didn't know this before yesterday, but mostly all fragrances are not made by the brand that "owns" it. For instance, one of mark.'s main fragrance houses we use (and one of the biggest in the industry) is Firmenich. We got the opportunity to visit their New York office (only one in the US) and learn about the process of making a fragrance, how they work with each client/brand, and we got to smell different scents (like violet, pinapple, cinnamon, and even combined several to make different scents, like chocolate).

mark.'s current fragrance that Firmenich made is Jewel (my favorite!). I wish I could remember everything we talked about yesterday to share, but to get a glimpse of where we went and what we saw, you can go to http://www.firmenich.com/ and http://www.osmoz.com/. These obviously can't let you smell what we got to or see upcoming scents (which was really exciting!) but it's a good taste of how a fragrance house works and explains how most fragrances aren't really the brand's original.

Here are the pictures I took from the trip:

This was the main lobby

This was the room we stayed in for the presentation and smellings

The table set up of the mark. fragrances they've done. The black boxes are self training sets created by one of their own Chemists that the public can buy to train themselves on fragrances - I might be purchasing one :o)

I think they knew how much we love cupcakes because they had these for us

Me and Alison - the mark.eting interns!

I chose the red velvet cupcake of course!

Me and Claire - roommates

They even had mark. M&Ms!!

This is how many blotter cards we smelled, each with their own scent on them (either a raw material, works in progress, or upcoming fragrances!)

Today wasn't very eventful for me (except for getting my haircut, yay). However, in our conference room, PR set up a great "sneak peek" of our upcoming products for fashion editors to come look at! I didn't really know about this until this morning when I was asked if I had my camera to come take pictures of the set up (for online and creative visuals) but it was so fun to see some products that I have yet to hear about...so you also get a sneak peek of the upcoming products for the rest of the year!

This is at the main table, starting with Magalog 10 (we just started 8, so in 2 months 10 will be coming out)

All the way to Magalog 13 which will come out in December!

This is the back table with the goodies and cute decorations

And of course, some pink and brown M&Ms...except we didn't get mark. printed on them like Firmenich did for us yesterday :o(

The candy/product goody bar

And the infamous Trend Book - this is a new thing for mark. and everyone in the office has worked really hard on it for months, so when it's finally out it will be very exciting for the company! It basically features upcoming trends and what we will be bringing out in the future - which is what's on the tables for this event

And the whole conference room in one glance - PR did a great job at setting this up for the editors and I can't wait to find out how they liked it!

After work, I went straight to the Aveda salon by campus and finally got my haircut! I didn't get as risky as I thought I would, but it's still a lot shorter than before...but SO much healthier!

And not that you asked, but this is a delicious New York intern's dinner before getting paid again...salad and rice...but I promise it was delicious :o)

Also, when I checked the mail today, I got a wonderful envelope with Glenn Beck's new book, Common Sense from Scott. I have already started reading it, and love it...so thank you Scott for that surprise!

For now I'm going to clean dishes, read my new book, and hopefully go to bed early since I was very tired today...but thank you for still staying connected with my internship!

Can't wait to be home!

Love, Taylor