To always keep the smell of the loved one, the dead get in fragrance

(AFP) - Store in a perfume bottle the smell of the loved, whether dead or temporarily absent: the project of a small business that needs to be born thanks to the research of the University of Le Havre .The idea came there seven years Katia Apalategui, insurance agent in the Eure, inconsolable at having lost his father and sorry I can not keep him smell she liked so much."I cogitais driving and I talked to my mother who told me, + just imagine, I also miss the smell and I did not want to wash his pillowcase +", told AFP this woman of 52 years.She was not the only one to be attached to the smell of a relative. But would it be possible to keep the smell of someone? And commercially exploit?This business woman will study the issue thoroughly, knocking on different doors without success, until he met Seinari, regional innovation agency Haute-Normandie, who put her in touch with the unit Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry (Urcom) of the University of Le Havre.It has developed a technique to replicate the human scent from a garment. "We take the person's clothing, the smell is extracted, representing more than fifty molecules, and is reconstituted as a perfume in alcohol after four days," explains Géraldine Savary, lecturer at the Urcom, without going into the secrets.The Urcom transferred Tuesday its expertise to society "Kalain" Florian Rabeau, Katia Apalategui son, a student at ISC Paris Business School, who should start the case in mid-September with the Using a chemist.Helped financially by Seinari, hosted by the ICC, the start-up will be based on scientific brand new nursery Miserey in Evreux. His main target: Funeral societies.

- The market security blanket -"We will propose to families, through the funeral, a box containing a small bottle with the odor of the deceased withdrawn on a fabric that we have provided," says Ms. Apalategui."It is tailor-made, from the intimate to be sold at around 560 euros," she says, calling his product "olfactory comfort" which will be added to the photos, videos and other souvenirs the missing person."Smell is the strongest sense in terms of memory (...) We bring a very emotionally charged," she argues in the presentation of its business plan."Ms. Apalategui made a huge commercial work in this very closed environment of the funeral," said Mickael Arnoult, charge d'affaires at Seinari.The funeral market is vast and offers perspectives to the little Norman startups. According to INSEE, there are 560,000 deaths per year and annual forecasts for 2045 are 740,000.And then there was abroad. The business woman thinks to Spain where she studied one year, and the United States, where there is already a company that also offers an olfactory memory, but working on DNA.But the company does not want to lock up mainly in the funeral sector and also thinking of markets, more joyful, Valentine's Day and that of "security blanket" for young children temporarily away from their parents.For these targets, the young shoot rather go through internet sales, says Florian Rabeau.The future entrepreneur is the envy of his classmates at ISC. "Some have said to me if you need shopping, do not hesitate," he says.