BY JOHN ECKBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Waltor Rice has been working for more than five years on his business.
(Saed Hindash photo)
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FAIRFIELD -- Walter Rice hopes to turn a handful of scents into a fistful of dollars.
Creator of the Art of Air Gilbert Young air freshener and a licensee for Jim Borgman Collectibles -- as well as two other art-based car air fresheners -- Mr. Rice struggled for the past two years to crack this corner of the automobile accessory market.
For two years before that, he attempted to produce and market a room air freshener -- an effort that eventually stalled. Today, with 400 outlets in Greater Cincinnati selling his car fragrances, Mr. Rice, owner of Hide-N-Fresh Co., thinks that the door of opportunity for his firm has finally opened.
It was not a pain-free road trip for Mr. Rice, and his wife, Tarsha. "Through the ins and outs of being an entrepreneur, we have suffered greatly," Mr. Rice said.
"We have lost our house, lost our car. We were on welfare for 3 1/2 years, had to live with in-laws, had to live in a two-bedroom apartment. We had to live in a basement. But all the time, I believed the Lord would help us. And he has."
After the plans to produce a room freshener failed, Mr. Rice decided that his car-freshener idea had potential as long as he could acquire the rights to reproduce the artwork. Mr. Rice approached Mr. Young, an artist from Atlanta whose paintings and prints have sold particularly well to African-Americans.
Mr. Rice told Mr. Young that he would reprint and reduce the size of the art, infuse each with a dose of fragrance and display them at store cash registers. It would be a marriage of art, aroma and automobile.
Mr. Young signed on, Mr. Rice agreed to pay him 15 percent licensing fees, and a new company was born. Soon, the firm signed up Mr. Borgman, animal artist Harold Rigsby and Mark Mains, known in Greater Cincinnati as "The Cartoon Guy."
It remains a struggling concern, dependent upon space, volunteer product assemblers and financial backing from members or pastors of Freedom of Worship Baptist Church, Word of Truth Christian Ministries and Word of Life Ministry Christian Center.
Assemblers meet monthly as needed in the factory - warehouse - headquarters of the company -- the D&E Plaza strip shopping center. "They believe in me, and they believe in Hide-N-Fresh," Mr. Rice said.
The assembly line begins with punching out the art, threading string through a hole, spraying it with fragrance and then packaging it for sale.
Pastor Randal E. Burton of the Lincoln Heights church has even pitched in and sprayed cards. "He had a deadline to meet. I'm the type of person that if you're working, I'm not going to stand around and watch," Mr. Burton said.
"He's had this vision for four years and within the last couple of years, the product has evolved. It has the potential to make him what he wants to be. He's inventive and bright, and if he gets the right break, this product has the potential to take off."
Mr. Rice projects sales of $1 million in 1998 -- mostly in $1.49 increments. He has about $500,000 in inventory and expects it will not be in storage long. Some stores sell out in about two weeks.
After receiving reports that his product's sales outpace competitors by a 5-to-1 ratio, Mr. Rice wants to take his business to the next level: part-time staff on a production line that has a budget.
Huge market potential
There are 130 million vehicles registered in America, and with the average freshener lasting four weeks, the market for air fresheners is enormous. It has also seen modest growth.
"We don't know if it means more young people are using air fresheners or if it's inflation," John Reilly, spokesman for the Automotive Parts and Accessories Association, a trade group based in Bethesda, Md., that monitors automotive after-market product sales. "The category is growing but not as fast as other accessory categories like car covers, which have jumped 25 percent in one year."
The automobile air-freshener market was $226 million in 1996, up 7 percent from the $211 million sold in 1994, according to association figures. Annual sales of air fresheners rank ahead of floor mats, car covers and replacement mirrors, he said.
Douglas Negrin, general manager of Medo Industries, an automobile air-freshener manufacturer based in White Plains, N.Y., thinks that the market is 10 percent larger than association estimates. Medo Industries was bought by Quaker State Corp. for $160 million in October 1996.
"There is no defined scanner data like in some other markets, and all the companies except for ours are privately held," he said. "I have to believe it's a $250 million market in retail dollars."
Hot products
Air fresheners are among the better sellers at automobile parts stores, said Chuck Howell, a buyer for Auto Parts Warehouse Outlet, which has an automobile parts store in Milford and another in Norwood. "Sometimes, it seems like everybody has a freshener in their car -- whether it is the little pine tree or the naked bimbo. Most days, we sell two dozen or more," he said.
"Younger people buy them to make a statement. The older set buys because they just like the fragrance. My biggest seller has always been the vanilla tree. Behind that is the Penthouse Pet," Mr. Howell said.
Though Mr. Rice has lined up some formidable retail outlets in United Dairy Farmers and Kroger and Shell, BP and Marathon gasoline stations, he now wants to catch a ride with a monster: a big-box store like Bigg's or Kmart. Letters sent to five have not been answered. The company has broadened its product line to greeting cards, picture puzzles and air fresheners that smell like popular perfumes. "Those were so hot, people were stealing them," Mr. Rice said. A Mother's Day card that included an art card with fragrance was introduced this spring, the weekend before Mother's Day and 90 percent of them were sold, Mr. Rice said.
He plans to market auto fresheners to fraternities and sororities and has approached professional sports teams to see whether there is any interest in having a Hide-N-Fresh Indianapolis Pacer logo hanging on thousands of rearview mirrors.
One lesson of the business, Mr. Rice said, was learning that a fragrance that lasted 45 days was probably too much of a good thing. Shrinking the life of the fragrance to 30 days, which could lead to more sales, is a 1998 goal for the company.
