A nose for business

Debbie Knight lives on one of those Wimbledon byways that makes you think you're in a sleepy rural village instead of in one of Europe's most frantic urban capitals. Here the neighbourhood stables - complete with ponies, young girls and the requisite equine smells - literally spill out onto the path. A few doors down though is Knight's home, and inside the ambient scents are decidedly refined rather than bucolic.
Knight - who is, by the way, allergic to horses - is the head of a home fragrance empire. In her sunny kitchen she makes it all seem very easy, but it turns out that the path that delivered her here was anything but straightforward.
"I was an event organiser and then I got breast cancer," she says simply, "so I stopped working while I was having my treatment. On our first holiday away, after I'd finished my treatment, we went to France for skiing. We got there and there was no snow.
So we said let's just pack up and go somewhere else.
"We went to Florence because we were quite near the Italian border. We got the train down and found this hotel, and in the hotel they had Dr Vranjes diffusers, which I'd never seen before. It was amazing - the smell of the hotel was just stunning." She, her daughter and husband found themselves inhaling happily every time they returned to the hotel, so Knight bought a batch of the unusual bottles of scent and their bamboo reed diffusers to install in her own south-west London home.
"Everyone kept saying, "What is that smell, where did you get them?' So I rang
up and said, 'Where can you buy them in England?' They said, "Nowhere but we're looking for someone.' I put the phone down and thought, 'I could do that for sure. If I like it then surely I'll be able to sell it.'"
With no background in retail, Knight jumped in at the deep end of the fragrance world. "For me it was like where do I start? What do I do? But things just fell into place." Quick thinking on her feet led to
a warehouse, fulfilment company, accountant and even the name for her enterprise - Senti. "You just talk to people," she reveals. "People are very kind in giving away contacts, and I try to do that as well."
This kind of natural warmth, generosity and optimism led directly to her first stockist. "The first shop I went to is one in Wandsworth - Atelier in Webbs Road.
I took in my first four bottles of samples because I just thought I'd try somewhere local. I walked there - I thought it would be so much more difficult!" The buyer loved Dr Vranjes, just as Knight did, and placed a big order on the spot. "From there I got the confidence to go out and ring people up.
It's been good!"
Exactly four years later, Senti has an online shop as well as hundreds of stockists literally up and down the country.
The company distributes not only home fragrance diffusers, but also candles, bath and body potions, liquid hand soaps, linen sprays and gifts. Knight's also expanded operations to include further product ranges - Belcanto from Florence, New Orleans-based Akeewakee and London's own Kelly Hoppen. An own-label range is in the pipeline, and the opening of Senti's first stand-alone store - in south-west London, naturally - is imminent.
The new choice of business address was an obvious one, given that Knight is enamoured of her neighbourhood. "South west - it's got everything. I can walk down the road and go 'Hi!' to the butcher and newsagents, which is what's nice about living in the area. We can walk to restaurants, cinema, do the shopping.
I want to be able to walk and talk to people," she affirms.
Born to walk and talk to people, Knight hasn't entirely left her former career of events planning behind. She's involved in fundraising for the Lavender Trust, a part
of the charity Breast Cancer Care, as an organiser of the annual Renaissance Photography Prize. Last year the competition yielded 17,000 entries,
a high-profile exhibition, a hardcover coffee table book and tens of thousands of pounds for the charity. Past judges have included Martin Parr and Mary McCartney, and Knight and her colleagues are hard at work on the 2010 competition, which opens
this October.
Knight's onwards and upwards spirit is a great match for the feel-good effects of Senti's fragrances, which range from wild fig to summery tuberose. Conquering cancer, weathering a snow-free ski holiday, launching into retail during a recession or even being allergic to her friendly four-legged neighbours - these are all challenges she takes gracefully in her stride.

A nose for business

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