October has been declared by the U.S. Apple Association as National Apple Month. Apple is a popular fruit that smells great in cooking, home fragrance, and is even used in fine fragrance. You may have noticed Scentsy doesn’t offer many apple scented products with the exception of Baked Apple Pie. Let me explain why. Quality apple notes tend to sit in the top note category of the scent pyramid even though they are a fruit and fruits tend to be middle notes.  This means apple notes are easy to smell in a new bar of wax or in a Slim Tester.  It also means they are diffusive and, when heated, convert quickly to a gaseous state.  So, for 4 to 8 hours, you can easily detect quality apple notes in the air.  But for Scentsy, 4 to 8 hours isn’t long enough.  While we don’t make any specific claims to bar duration (because they can be used in such a wide variety of environments and we have over 80 fragrances), we do test bars to ensure they meet Scentsy product development duration standards in a controlled environment.  This means we need a complementary apple note (such as a pear) as a mid-note ingredient in our fragrance pyramid—not just as a top note.  And guess what?  Finding a good, fresh, high-quality apple note that fits these mid-note criteria is no easy task, or may not be affordable.

This also raises the issue of natural versus artificial fragrance notes (not to be confused with natural versus synthetic oils which is entirely separate).  Natural apple smells better than artificial apple every day.  Scentsy proudly leaves the “artificial”  fragrance notes to our competitors. Scentsy customers expect better and that’s exactly what we strive to deliver with every fragrance we develop. 

Many of our competitors actually combust or burn fragrance and wax.  While this can be messy and even a potential fire hazard, it allows these competitors “to cheat” in a way that we won’t.  Combustion permits for lighter fragrance loads because the fire will consume and distribute (with the smoke) every last molecule of fragrance.   Conversely, we rely on minimal heat generated by electricity that accelerates the fragrance molecules into evaporating off of the melted wax.

Yes, we put more fragrance into our wax than our competitors, but quantity isn’t everything.  While quantity does contribute directly to duration, quality is derived from the raw materials that make up the fragrance pyramid.  Every product we develop has to meet the expectations of our customers and our Consultants. So for now, just know we’ll continue to keep looking for that elusive perfect apple fragrance that meets Scentsy’s high standards. In the meantime, celebrate National Apple Month by warming a slice of Scentsy’s delicious Baked Apple Pie.