Following on from Carvansons debut on The One Show last Friday, we were asked by the producers of BBC Radio Manchester to give a little interview explaining how the process of creating fragrances begins here in Hollins Village, Bury. One of our partners Luke Whowell took the Radio presenter on a little tour of the factory yesterday and the interview was broadcast on yesterdays evening show.

If you click the link below and take the bar across to 55 mins, you will be able to listen to Lukes interview.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00frw8p

As you know - last Monday I was down in London for the launch of {{Intangible}}, the bespoke fragrance created by Carvansons for New York design label A la Disposition.

We have a saying here in the UK, that you can wait hours for a bus and then 2 come along at once, and thats exactly the position I found myself in last week. I had been in close contact with the researchers from The One Show on BBC on and off over the past month or so, as they had been putting together some background for a new show with the legendary Mr Dan Snow called Filthy Cities. The premise behind the programme is that the stinking histories of London, New York and Paris would be recreated and brought to life, marrying historical accounts with modern science in an ambitious attempt to show how these modern cities which were forged in the dirt of the past, emerged from these once filthy cities into the iconic modern metropolises that we all know and love today.

The show will be presented as a kind of travelogue, but of course one that we as viewers will not have seen before. Dan will use state of the art CGI and step into the shoes of professionals such as the pig handler helping to clear the New York city streets of waste, the Parisienne undertaker battling to cope with the human cost of a bloody revolution and the medieval muck-raker responsible for clearing tonnes of excrement from the streets of London. Our job at Carvansons on this occasion was to recreate the rather ‘beautiful’ stench of the excrement from the streets of London….all of you out there that think we have glamorous jobs here can now start to feel a little smug….It is an absolutely horrendously cloying smell and clings to your clothes and hair like a second skin.

I wont spoil the show completely but I can tell you that 3 of the ingredients involved in the programme are…

1. Dan Snow

2. A blindfold

3. A tube of sewage slurry

As you can imagine, I was in quite a high state of excitement at the thought of being involved in the filming aspect of the show, but as luck would have it, the only day that Dan was available for filming was the very same day I was travelling down to London….ah well, you cant win them all I suppose.

All the feedback from the staff here at the office (mainly women I hasten to add) was very complimentary – Mr Snow definitely made a lasting impression on more than 1 member of the office staff! …ahem…Helen!

You will all soon be able to have a sniff of the aromas used in the creation of this programme as they are being turned into scratch n sniff format on a postcard that will be sent out with the Radio Times nearer the launch as an advertising gimmick.

It just goes to show the array of fragrances we actually create here at our factory, from the single note florals and fruits, to the more complex combination fragrances, right through to the types of aromas used by the BBC, and in exhibition centres, museums, zoos etc all over the world – basically whatever your enquiry we can always find a fragrance to suit, as our tagline quite rightly states – You desire, we design and deliver.

For any further information, please feel free to contact me.