When seeking a pharmaceutical alcohol supplier to create a new deodorant product for your cosmetics range, having a special scent or unique selling point behind the idea will help it to stand out in what is a busy marketplace.

For Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido, their idea was to create a scent which specifically targets and covers the scent which is produced when you’re stressed. But what does that smell like exactly?

According to research conducted by the brand, it smells like onion. They took a sample of 40 women and put them in the stressful situation of meeting someone for the first time. After the meeting, they ‘collected gas samples’ for the women’s skin, according to Japan Today, and noticed that two chemical compounds, allyl mercaptan and dimethyl trisulfide, were elevated.

The combination of these chemicals the brand has referred to as ‘stress smell’ and created their deodorant to counteract it. Japan is the perfect market for this product, as not only are the workers there the most stressed in the world, there is also a particular issue with ‘smell harassment’ – basically anti-social smells in the workplace. This could be tobacco, food, perfume or just simply body odour, but with a trend for women in the workplace in Japan proving ‘sensitive’ to the smells of male co-workers, it’s a Zeitgeist issue that the brand is tapping into.

Shiseido has form for discovering certain smells, and has also discovered a specific  ‘old age smell’ and a deodorant to counteract it.