Scents Make Dollars
SANTA ANA — When Gus and Linda Doppes first started pushing their air fresheners packed in pop-top cans, the critics were brutal.
“You meet with a buyer and he says, ‘That’s the ugliest product I’ve ever seen--it won’t sell,’ ” Linda Doppes recalled.
However, the couple stood by their can, ignoring cracks that it looked like cat food. And the gamble, it seems, has paid off.
Five years after the first round of rebuffs, the couple’s California Scents has carved a niche in the fragrance industry, selling products nationwide and in 25 countries.
Bearing names such as Malibu Mulberry, Laguna Breeze and La Jolla Lemon, the products have elbowed their way into car washes, military commissaries and chain stores such as Target and Kmart Corp., competing head-on with industry heavyweights Glade, Airwick and Renuzit.
Born in the Doppeses’ garage, California Scents now occupies three buildings in an industrial area of Santa Ana. The product line has been expanded to include sprays, spritzers, gels and “scent drops” to sweeten the air in homes and vehicles. The privately held company generated about $10 million in sales last year, said Linda Doppes, company president.
Despite the growth, the company isn’t likely to rattle the industry’s bigger players, analysts say.
S.C. Johnson & Sons, maker of Glade air fresheners, “really controls the market,” said Tom Branna, editor of Household and Personal Products magazine. Should California Scents become “a blip” on the larger firm’s radar screen, S.C. Johnson would probably “spend like crazy” to drive out the competition, he said.
A spokeswoman for S.C. Johnson said she had not heard of California Scents and declined further comment.
In any case, Linda Doppes said she is satisfied with her company’s growth--sales have at least doubled every year for the last five years. “Our very first year we were in the black,” she said.
Lacking a big advertising budget, the Doppeses have expanded their company by producing eye-catching products and then persuading buyers to try them. Their hands-on approach has made the difference, said Rich Hibbens, a district manager for Target stores, where California Scents’ air fresheners are now a top seller.
“They show their products,” Hibbens said. “They helped us get them into the stores very quickly. They would come into the stores and actually put them onto the shelves.”
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The Newport Beach couple decided to try the air-freshening business after a home building venture stalled during the real estate slump early in the decade.
Linda Doppes, a certified public accountant, has roots in the industry. Her father, Ralph Simons, owns Associated Products Inc., a Glenshaw, Pa., company that manufactures industrial commercial air fresheners.
To educate themselves about their new venture, the couple visited stores, roaming the air freshening aisles and quizzing employees and customers.
Eventually, they selected scents, packaging, labels and brochures. And by January 1993, they had their first can in hand.
The couple opted to pack their scents first in the pop-top aluminum containers, which hold vegetable fibers pressed into pads and soaked in fragrance oils. The containers are durable and “environmentally friendly,” said Gus Doppes, 50, a former commercial airline pilot.
Relying largely on their savings to jump-start the business, the couple worked for two years from their home, which at the time was in the Bear Brand Ranch community of Laguna Niguel. But as sales mounted and huge delivery trucks began lumbering through the gated neighborhood, the couple decided it was time to move the business.
To promote their products, the Doppeses presented the little cans in sunny yellow display cases and persuaded store employees to position them at checkout stands, where customers are more likely to buy on impulse.
Their first national sales deal was with the military, an agreement Gus Doppes snagged in early 1993 after meeting with an El Toro Marine base buyer, one of the few clients who liked the little can immediately.
“We can sell truckloads of this,” Linda Doppes recalled the buyer saying.
But the first order fell short of expectations. It was collected, not by a fleet of trucks, but by a woman driving a station wagon.
Linda Doppes, 45, remembers the conversation as she and her husband loaded 163 cans into the vehicle: “I’m going, ‘Gus, where are the truckloads of orders?’ ”
Undaunted, the couple began visiting military bases, presenting their products to commissary officers and grocery managers. “We personally visited probably every commissary in California, plus at least a fourth of them in the United States,” Linda Doppes said.
California Scents air fresheners are now shipped nationwide to all branches of the military, she said. “They probably do buy in truckloads today,” she said.
The couple also began making inroads into the civilian market. They got a huge break when Target, a division of Dayton Hudson Corp., decided to test the products.
“When I first saw it, I think I started laughing and said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ ” Target manager Hibbens remembered. Persuaded to give it a try, he stocked it in 10 stores in the Riverside and San Bernardino areas.
It started selling, he said, and the chain sent the product to its 700 stores nationwide.
“That’s what really launched us,” Gus Doppes said.
Hitching a ride on a national chain is a major step for a small company, said Wesley Moultrie, a consumer analyst for Duff & Phelps Credit Co. in Chicago. Still, it’s a tough business.
About 86% of the sales in the $700 million industry are gobbled up by three companies: S.C. Johnson & Sons, the Glade manufacturer; Reckitt & Colman Inc., which makes Airwick, and Dial Corp., the Renuzit manufacturer.
To make significant inroads, California Scents will have to continue to burrow into a niche, perhaps by playing up its unusual packaging and winning customer loyalty, Moultrie said. Somehow, the products must stand apart.
The use of California names could help, he said.
“That might be appeal enough--the mystique of California, the actual fragrance,” he said.
But it’s too early to predict California Scents’ future, he added. “You need stability and you need duration of product on the market. I’d like to see what they look like a year from now, and two years, as they move beyond the novelty and see if they have the staying power for the longer term.”
The company targets both the household and automotive industries to bolster sales, while most air-freshening companies concentrate on one or the other, Linda Doppes said.
After focusing initially on the California marketplace, the Doppeses also quickly expanded outside of the state, which now represents only 10% of their overall sales. They use distributors to ship their products to a wide range of outlets, from veterinary clinics and pet stores to auto parts businesses and flower shops.
The couple has made a number of discoveries along the way, pinpointing areas where one fragrance is generally preferred over another.
For example, Texans and other Southerners go for the sweet scents such as Coronado Cherry and Gardenia del Mar. In Idaho and Colorado, buyers like fresh fragrances, such as Sierra Meadows and Ponderosa Pine. Asian countries, on the other hand, favor citrus scents, such as Orange Blossom and La Jolla Lemon.
At the moment, California Scents is pushing scented candles, the hottest new category in the air-freshening industry. Later, the Doppeses hope to break into health food stores.
With the business growing “almost beyond control,” California Scents recently hired several managers with extensive experience in different segments of the industry, Linda Doppes said.
But the company has only 18 full-time workers, and the Doppeses still keep very busy.
Next month, for example, their Hawaiian vacation will include forays into island stores to check on their products.
“We’re hitting all the Wal-Marts and Kmarts in Hawaii,” Linda Doppes said “Persistence is probably more important than anything.”
In another sign of success, California Scents has already received buyout offers from consumer products companies that want to expand into the air freshening business.
But, so far, the couple has declined. California Scents is, after all, their baby, Linda Doppes said, and they are enjoying watching it grow.
“When you look at what’s available out there and all the accounts you’re not in, we’ve just really started to tap the market,” she said.
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Best-Smeller List
How Santa Ana-based California Scents compares with the nation’s top-selling home air fresheners:
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Rank Brand Sales (in millions) 1. Glade Plug-Ins $110.4 2. Glade Home Air Freshener Spray 46.6 3. Renuzit Longlast Spray 44.1 4. Glade Spin Fresh 37.6 5. Glade Plug-Ins Candle Scents 31.3 30. California Scents 3.1
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Note: Based on 52-week period ending Dec. 7, 1997
Source: Information Resources Inc.
