Patricia P. Upton
Founder and Former President and Chief Executive Officer
Aromatique Inc.
In the early 1980s, Patricia Upton met the owner of a gift shop in Heber Springs and started going to The Browsing Post to — in her words — play, have a good time and fluff things up.
It was 1982 and Upton had promised Sandra Horne, the shop’s owner, that she would make something special for the store’s Christmas season open house. But she had forgotten about the project and with just two weeks to go before the event, Upton had no idea what she was going to do.
She also had no idea her simple promise to a friend would spawn a worldwide phenomenon of decorative fragrances and a company that gave hundreds of Arkansans jobs and produced sales in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
She scooped up handfuls of pine cones, acorns, berries, sweetgum balls and leaves and scented the mixture with a home-brewed recipe of pharmacy oils. Dubbed “The Smell of Christmas,” the scent and the concept of bringing fragrance into the home in ways other than with fresh flowers were an instant hit.
The product and concept quickly spread to upscale retail stores. Thus, a business called Aromatique and an industry were born. Maybe that’s why Upton liked to say Aromatique happened by accident. But the fact that success and Patti Upton found each other was no accident.
Born May 19, 1938, in Jonesboro, the daughter of Dr. James and Mary Hinkle Pulliam, Patti Upton first attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, where her natural creativity and love of beauty found a place to bloom. While there, she won a Christian Dior Fashion Award and earned an Associate in Arts degree. After Stephens College, Upton came back to her home state and attended the University of Arkansas. She was a Pi Beta Phi and crowned Miss University of Arkansas in 1959.
There she met Dick Upton. They married and he became a businessman in West Memphis, where the couple had twin sons, Paige and Peyton. Weekends the family spent on Greers Ferry Lake nurtured her love for the beauty of the foothills of the Ozarks.
All the ingredients for Aromatique — a love of beautiful things, the natural surroundings of her home state and time — were there. But it took someone with the style and drive of Patti Upton to bring Mother Nature and Father Christmas together.
Her artistic eye and a talent for business have grown Aromatique into a multifaceted corporation that includes fragrance lines, accessories and decorative containers. The specialized processes and technologies used in the decorative fragrances industry have spawned a variety of economic opportunities within Arkansas for everyone from botanical harvesters to package designers, making Aromatique recognized worldwide as a major Arkansas-based company.
Upton refers to Aromatique as a “we” company and gives much of the credit for its success to the unique collection of people and talent who have been drawn to the company’s home base in Heber Springs. Upton put together a company of creative individuals who truly make a winning team. The ingenuity of Aromatique employees built much of the specialized machinery needed to give birth to what is now Decorative Home Fragrance.
Upton appeared twice on “Working Woman,” a nationally syndicated television show from Washington, D.C. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” did a segment and People Magazine, The London Sunday Express, The Washington Post, Victoria Magazine and Southern Living have all profiled Upton and the company. In 1999, the book The Business of Bliss featured her and the Aromatique story.
Her business savvy also led Upton to a seat on the board of directors of AT&T for 18 years.
Upton created “The Natural State” fragrance line in part to benefit The Nature Conservancy. Since the launch in 1993 at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City, more than $1 million has been donated to the Conservancy.
But that is only one example of Aromatique’s and Upton’s philanthropic works. Nearly $1 million has been donated to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center Auxiliary for the purchase of equipment for the hospital. In 2011, a $250,000 contribution by AT&T Arkansas was given in honor of Upton as an outgoing board member. The donation gave a boost to the nanomedicine research program in the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute at UAMS.
Her charitable donations earned Upton the Distinguished Citizen Award from the Little Rock NBC affiliate KARK-TV and the governor of Arkansas.
Upton has been recognized by her colleagues in the business community with numerous awards. Some honors include: Business & Professional Leader Award, Rotary International Paul Harris Fellow; Top 500 United States Business Women by Working Woman magazine; The Nature Conservancy Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Environment; Corporations That Make a Difference, International Women’s Forum; Society of Entrepreneurs, Memphis, Tennessee; Citizen of the Year, Scottish Rite Masons of Arkansas; Arkansan of the Year, Easter Seals Society; Director’s Choice Award, National Women’s Economic Alliance; and Most Influential Women, Arkansas Business 2010.
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