You tell us
Six questions about the place, your goal and which layers take part. You do not need to know anything about scent or music.
We read
Your answers go through our own method, together with what we see of the place ourselves.
The proposal
In your inbox within five working days of the survey, with the monthly amount. Nothing up front.
You choose
Two scent compositions in your own space, with the first music sketch and a visual proposal.
We build on research we can explain. Three figures to start with; further down you will find the full evidence with its sources.
Higher visitor responses when a pleasant scent is present. The effect grows stronger the better the scent fits the place.
Higher spending, averaged over all measured situations. Not a promise, but the order of magnitude the research arrives at.
Measured effects in the meta-analysis these figures come from. Not a single study but the sum of a whole field.
This is where your scent begins.An empty room, with no catalogue to choose from. What will hang here we only make after we have seen your place.
A scent that already existed was never yours.
Most providers work from a catalogue. You choose number seven, it gets a sticker with your name, and three streets away number seven is on the wall as well.
We start empty. Every client receives a formula made for that place: from the building, the light, the materials, the neighbourhood and the people who walk in. What comes out did not exist before. Whether we then reserve it for you alone is something we agree in the proposal.
It is slower and it asks more of us. It is also the only thing that truly makes a place its own.
Six places that have nothing in common.
Except that all six want to say something without spelling it out. What we make depends entirely on the building, the light and the people who come there, which is why none of these places resembles the next.
The lobby you recognise before you see it
A signature that holds all day long, from the reception to the corridor to the rooms.
A building with a history of its own
Where the architecture already speaks, the scent should follow its tone, not drown it out.
Staying longer without anyone noticing
In a shop we steer on how long people stay and on the calm in which someone makes a choice.
The first impression for your own people
A welcome that says the same thing every morning, to visitors and to the people who work there.
Softening a space that sounds hard
In a large volume of stone and steel, scent does what acoustics and light cannot manage on their own.
Where the air itself is the product
Steam, warmth and scent belong together here; the composition is made for that climate.
These images show the kind of place we work for, not existing clients. We only show what we make for a client once they give their permission.
One translation. Four outcomes that belong together.
You can buy a scent from one company and a playlist from another. They will not contradict each other, but they will never strengthen each other either. With us everything comes from the same translation of the place. That is where the effect comes from.
Four outcomes from the same translation. Because they come from one source rather than being matched afterwards, they cannot drift apart.
This is where a place takes shape for the first time.
Until now your signature is a profile: choices about the building, the brand and what a visitor should feel. Here it becomes something you can perceive. A formula you can smell, a motif you can hear, an image you can hang on the wall.
The same translation, unfolded four times. That is why the layers strengthen each other instead of merely existing side by side.
That coherence is not decorative. When scent and music sit in the same register, visitors rate the space higher than when they were chosen separately. When they get in each other's way, that rating actually drops.
You remember a place with your nose, long after your eyes have forgotten it.Trace & Tone
What has actually been shown.
We build on research we can explain, and we are just as clear about where it stops. These are the three findings our method rests on.
A pleasant scent measurably lifts the experience
A meta-analysis of 671 measured effects found that a pleasant ambient scent raises visitor responses by three to fifteen percent on average. Spending rose by three percent on average. It works better the more the scent fits the place. Simple scents do better than complex ones. There is an optimum: too much scent backfires.
Roschk, H., & Hosseinpour, M. (2020). Pleasant Ambient Scents: A Meta-Analysis of Customer Responses and Situational Contingencies. Journal of Marketing, 84(1), 125-145.Scent and music must sit in the same register
When researchers matched scent and music, visitors rated the environment more positively, showed more approach behaviour and were more satisfied than with a random combination. A calm scent with a slow tempo, a lively scent with a faster one. A mismatched combination actually pulled the experience down.
Mattila, A. S., & Wirtz, J. (2001). Congruency of scent and music as a driver of in-store evaluations and behavior. Journal of Retailing, 77(2), 273-289.The senses are not linked at random
People consistently make the same links between the senses: a high note goes with something light and small, a low note with something heavy and dark. Almost everyone makes them in the same way. They help the brain decide what belongs together, and they are the reason a scent and a piece of music from the same translation are experienced as one whole.
Spence, C. (2011). Crossmodal correspondences: A tutorial review. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 73(4), 971-995.And where it stops
What is well supported concerns atmosphere, mood, comfort, how long people stay and how they rate a place. That is exactly what we steer on.
What we do not claim: that scent changes how well people perform or how healthy they are. Those claims are small, often from a single laboratory and strongly coloured by what participants expect. Anyone who promises you that goes further than the research allows. We stick to what we can deliver and measure the effect in your own place.
You are not comparing the same purchase.
A scent subscription in the Benelux starts at around fifty-five to seventy euros per diffuser per month. For that you get a rented machine with a scent from a collection that also hangs in dozens of other businesses. Further up, the market spreads widely. The companies that make truly bespoke work usually do not publish their rates. We charge € 85 per machine per month and € 15 for a very small room with reed sticks. For that, your scent does not yet exist at the moment you order it.
| What you get | Scent subscription | Scent agency, premium | Trace & Tone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scent | From a collection, shared with others | Bespoke or from a stock of a few dozen | Bespoke; exclusivity is agreed in the proposal |
| Music | none | none | Own programme per room and time of day |
| Art | none | none | From the same signature, framed |
| Poem | none | none | Written for the identity that emerged |
| The diffuser | Rented, remains the supplier's | Rented or bought | Included, yours after 36 months |
| Development up front | Not applicable, there is nothing to develop | Usually thousands of euros | Nothing up front |
| Per month | € 55 to € 69 | On request | € 15 to € 85 |
With a scent subscription you pay for one sensory layer. With us you pay for four, all from the same translation of the place. But nobody buys it that way and we do not sell it that way either. The point is that it is a different purchase.
Amounts per diffuser per month, excluding VAT. The market figures come from our own competitor research in the Netherlands and Belgium, July 2026, based on the published rates of the largest providers. Companies that deliver bespoke work usually only quote after a conversation, which is why they appear as 'on request' in the table.
Music and imagery are not an add-on.
They come from the same translation and they are priced the same way. One amount per layer per month, just like scent, with nothing up front.
New instrumental music, made for your place, per room and per time of day, with four lists: one for each season, delivered in one go. We deliver the recordings digitally.
You play them on your own player, so without a music subscription. From six programmes onwards we charge nothing extra: € 510 for the whole building.
We compile the list and keep it up to date. It runs on your own business music service, for example Soundtrack.
A consumer streaming subscription is for personal use only, so the business subscription and the royalties remain your responsibility. From six programmes € 240.
A bespoke print or a typeset poem, from the same signature. The price depends on size, material and frame.
We deliver it framed. Never as a free digital extra.
The bill almost nobody includes.
A streaming subscription is not the whole bill for music. Buma/Stemra and Sena, the Dutch collecting societies, also charge per location: Buma for the writers of compositions and lyrics, Sena for the artists and producers of the recordings. For a shop Buma charges per square metre while Sena charges per employee. Two bases side by side, for the same music.
Our own productions are not registered with Buma/Stemra, and the recordings are ours and made for your location. We supply the ownership file that lets you show this: the track list with the maker of each title, the licence and the declaration of non-membership. We do not count on an exemption in advance; you have the conversation with Buma and Sena yourself and we supply the evidence.
So what does it play on?
That depends on the route. It is exactly the other way round from what you would expect.
With new music you do not need a music service. The recordings are ours. We deliver them digitally and in one go: four lists for each programme, one for each season, at matched loudness and with the ownership file. The atmosphere stays the same; what shifts is the tempo by a few beats and the tone colour. You can play them on what is already there. Many business amplifiers have a USB input or a network player built in; a Sonos plays a music library from a network folder and a Yamaha MusicCast from USB or from a music server on your own network. If there is nothing, a media player in the rack from about € 300 is enough. Or free software on a PC that is there anyway: VLC simply plays a folder and foobar2000 can add a schedule per time of day with the free Scheduler mod extension. No subscription and no internet needed.
With existing music you do need that service. Music by other makers may only be played commercially through a company licensed for it, such as Soundtrack; expect € 28 to € 62 per zone per month. We compile the list in Spotify, because that is where the catalogue is, and you bring it into your own service with the import function. Spotify is our worksheet; a consumer streaming subscription may not be used commercially. The subscription to that service and the royalties to Buma and Sena remain yours.
The sound system is not included in this amount. Speakers, amplification, cabling and the player remain yours. If a setup is already in place, we use it.
We looked for someone else who does this.
For that research we went through the whole Benelux. There are dozens of companies that rent out a scent machine with refills. There are good companies that supply background music and sound identity. And there are brand agencies that speak beautifully about sensory experience and then install nothing.
But a company that draws scent, music, imagery and words from one translation of the place, and delivers it as an ongoing partnership: that we did not find.
That is exactly where we chose to stand.
Tell us about the place.
Approximate answers are fine. Whatever you are not sure about, we settle together during the survey.
The background moves with your answers. This is not a scent yet, but it is the first translation of what you fill in.
Thank you. We will start working on your place.
Your request is with us. From here on it is human work, which takes a few days.
First a survey
We will contact you to arrange a visit. Within five working days after that the proposal is in your inbox: the signature for your place, what we do per room and what it costs per month.
Then you decide
Questions are welcome. If you would like to talk first, we plan a conversation before anything is fixed.
Two scents on trial
If you agree, we send two compositions. You smell them in your own space and choose one.
A method that reads. People who choose.
We have built our own method that reads a place. What you fill in goes into it, together with what we see of the place ourselves: the building, the neighbourhood, the brand, the people who come there. Out of that comes a profile that goes much further than three words.
That profile is the beginning, not the end. Our perfumer translates it into a real scent, by hand. We direct the music from the same translation; we choose and edit every piece and judge it before it plays in your place. Our method does the thinking that people cannot sustain consistently; the people do the work that no method can.
That is also why there is no list of scents. There is nothing to choose from, because nothing exists yet before we have read your place.
How our method arrives at those choices we keep to ourselves. That is precisely the part that cannot be copied.