His new passion inspired us to create a line of high quality scented candles.
Virginia was incredibly supportive, sharing her contacts in the industry and helping us creating the scents for the first three candles New York, Paris and London.
The candles became a success almost immediately and were sold in boutiques from Hawaii to Vermont.
We had enormous fun and made many plans. All of that changed in the morning hours of 9/11. Our perfect little world in tranquil Greenpoint, Brooklyn collapsed within sight of the Twin Towers. Our sales representative had to file for bankrupcy and our dream of a prospering scented candle company evaporated over night.
A short time later we parted ways, Michael went to Brazil, I moved to Berlin and Uli stayed in New York, where he now runs his own perfume label.

Almost two decades later, I came across some long-forgotten moving boxes in my Berlin basement containing the old scented candles from that bygone era. 
It was immediately clear to me that this beautiful project had to be revived.
I took action shortly thereafter and was delighted to reach Virginia on her old New York number. She was enthusiastic and promised to modernize the earlier scents and also develop the scents of the new Berlin, Helsinki and Stockholm candles.
Long retired, she turned production over to her former student, Helen Feygin, who ran her own perfume lab Intuiscent in New Jersey. In the meantime I designed the new candle packaging and reworked the old ones. In addition, the line has been expanded to include six diffusers in the same design and with the same fragrances.

Since sustainability had become very important to me, the previously used paraffin wax was replaced by rapeseed wax from regional organic cultivation. Accordingly, when selecting all the components used, we took great care to ensure that everything was sourced locally or at least from within Europe.
Helen recommended a very reliable perfume maker in Poland, who now produces the fragrances.
Finally, in spring 2022, the company Fragrant City UG for scented candles and diffusers was founded in Berlin.

In February 2023, we presented the scented candles and diffusers to a broad public at the Ambiente trade fair in Frankfurt and the international response was overwhelming.
To increase our presence in Scandinavia, we participated in the Helsinki Design Market in September 2024, which was a lot of fun.

On the first weekend in december we will return to our hometown Weil der Stadt in the Black Forest to offer our candles and the special edition Weil der Stadt - Linden blossom at the christmas market.