In 2018, we were nominated for the title "Entrepreneur of the Year".
The Sächsische Zeitung newspaper reported on February 4, 2018:
YOU HAVE THE REMEDY FOR THE FEAR OF THE DENTIST
Reima Air-Concept in Meerane develops fragrances to combat panic, fragrances to make you feel good and fragrances to attract you.
Anxiety is also present in the waiting room. Many dentist patients wait for their treatment with sweaty hands and a queasy feeling in their stomach. According to surveys, 70 percent of the German population are afraid of the drill, the unpleasant smells and being at the mercy of the dentist's chair. For entrepreneur Jens Reißmann, who has been involved in scent marketing for years, this fear was the source of a business idea. He developed an anti-anxiety fragrance. "I mainly used lavender and orange as anxiety blockers," says Reißmann, explaining the fragrance. Last year, his Meeran-based company Reima Air-Concept GmbH presented the new fragrance at the Euroshop trade fair in Düsseldorf and the International Dental Show in Cologne. "We were amazed at the response," says Reißmann. Reima now supplies several thousand dentists worldwide, including several hundred in Germany, with the soothing fragrance.
Reißmann has been involved in fragrance marketing since 1997. As a perfumer, he is self-taught. He actually trained as a printer. But an article about the success of fragrance marketing in the USA and Japan gave him the business idea of focusing on the olfactory senses instead of the visual. His credo as a lateral entrant: "If you really want something, you can achieve anything."
The concept of scent marketing is simple. People decide within seconds whether they can smell someone or something or not. The result: where it smells good, customers stay longer, where it stinks, they flee. In one supermarket, for example, orange sales doubled because a corresponding fragrance gave customers the emotional experience of fresh-smelling fruit. Sales increased from three to six tons within a year.
Today, Reima Air-Concept GmbH is one of the leading companies in the fragrance marketing market. The Meeran-based company supplies over 80 countries worldwide via main distributors and branches. More than 350 different fragrances are mass-produced. The business also includes professional equipment and systems that distribute fragrances and flavorings in rooms for commercial use. Another core area is the production of room air and textile fresheners as well as a vacuum cleaner fragrance with odor absorber for use in the catering, hotel and elderly care sectors. Since 2000, the company has also been developing, producing and selling innovative car care products under the Reimair brand name.
One of the latest orders is to provide fragrances for airports in Saudi Arabia. Reißmann estimates that up to 2,000 liters of fragrance need to be supplied each year. In addition to airports, shopping malls, petrol stations and furniture stores are also important customers. A video fragrance display was introduced in 2017 as a world first. It has a 42-inch LCD screen, two loudspeakers and an integrated room fragrance unit as standard. It is designed, for example, to draw attention to the café on the third floor of a furniture store and make customers want to visit with a pleasant coffee and cake scent. "It's an eye-catcher for the nose," says Reißmann.
The family business, which currently has 21 employees, is run by Jens Reißmann and Hendrik Herrbach. The shares in the company are held by their wives, 90 percent of which are held by Anke Reißmann. The company is on course for growth. According to Herrbach, turnover has risen by 40 percent in each of the past two years to reach a high seven-figure figure. 70 percent of turnover is generated with customers abroad. In two years, the fragrance company aims to reach the turnover threshold of 10 million euros. Four new employees were hired in 2017, with two more to follow this year.
However, things did not always go so smoothly. The financial market crisis also hit fragrance marketing hard. "The market in Russia collapsed from one day to the next," reports Reißmann. At the time, Reima was also on short-time working, but things gradually picked up again with new ideas and products. In November 2013, the company moved into its own premises in the Meerane industrial estate.
Reißmann is proud that his company was recognized as the first "family-friendly company" in the Chemnitz-Zwickau economic region ten years ago. "We need highly qualified employees who can speak several languages in order to communicate with our international clientele," says Reißmann. And if they have a good nose, that's not a bad thing either, of course.
Entrepreneur Award 2017/18
The business award "Saxony's Entrepreneur of the Year" is an initiative of the Sächsische Zeitung, Freie Presse and MDR as well as VW Saxony, the auditing and tax consulting firm PwC, LBBW-Sachsen Bank, the event equipment provider Congressteam in Dresden and the health insurance company AOK Plus.