LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Patti Upton, who founded the multimillion-dollar home fragrance company Aromatique thanks to a popular homemade mix of pine cones, oils and spices she concocted to help a friend’s shop “smell like Christmas,” has died at her Arkansas home. She was 79.
The married mother and grandmother died Tuesday after a brief illness at her home in the lakeside city of Heber Springs, about 50 miles north of Little Rock, according to the local funeral home handing her services, Family Funeral Services.
Her company had humble beginnings: leaves, berries, spices and a broomstick.
It started after Upton agreed in 1982 to help make a friend’s local shop smell festive. She mixed together leaves, acorns, pine cones, berries and gum balls, combined with oils and spices. Customers soon began asking to buy the scent looming through her friend’s store in Heber Springs, so she started mixing bigger batches — in garbage bags using a broomstick.
“Our friends thought absolutely I had lost my mind,” Upton told The Associated Press in 2000, as the company’s sales were expected to top $110 million. “They said tell them you’re making clothes. Don’t tell them you’re making the smell of Christmas.”
The work blossomed into an international business manufacturing fragrances, candles and other decorative products. According to the company, “The Smell of Christmas” remains the Aromatique’s flagship fragrance.
The company had production locations in Heber Springs, and sold products through thousands of stores and retailers, including Dillards.
“She attributed Aromatique’s success to the unique collection of people and talent on her staff,” Aromatique spokeswoman Ramona Gillespie said in a statement released Thursday.
Upton told the AP that when spring rolled around that first year, she was asked to create the smell of spring — and the business took off. Owners of other small stores asked for her products, and she expanded to other fragrance lines, including candles and decorative accessories.
“There was nothing like this on the market,” Upton said at the time.
Upton was inducted last year into the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, where she received an award for fashion design, before transferring to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where she met her husband, according to the funeral home’s obituary.
Upton is survived by her husband, Richard, twin sons Joseph Paige Upton and James Peyton Upton and their wives, and several grandchildren.
Man arrested after climbing Arkansas governor’s mansion gate
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An Arkansas man is charged with trespassing and public intoxication after state police say he climbed the gate at the governor’s mansion.
Court records show 55-year-old Edward Harper of North Little Rock was charged with the misdemeanor counts after being arrested about 1:10 a.m. Thursday on the grounds of the mansion.
Jail records show Harper remains in custody and court records do not list an attorney for him.
A spokesman for Gov. Asa Hutchinson told reporters that both Hutchinson and his wife were inside the mansion at the time, but that Harper was arrested seconds after entering the grounds and did not approach the mansion.
Explosive weekend storms possible in Oklahoma, Arkansas
NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — Forecasters say potentially explosive thunderstorms packing large hail, damaging winds and tornadoes could develop this holiday weekend over parts of eastern Oklahoma and northern Arkansas.
The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, says widespread severe storms are expected Saturday, stretching from parts of the central and southern Plains east to the mid-Atlantic coast.
The National Weather Service says thunderstorms will start to develop late Saturday in eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas and could quickly turn severe with large hail, high winds and tornadoes.
Later Saturday evening, the chances for more organized storms will increase in Arkansas. The weather service says large hail and a few brief tornadoes are possible as the storm line moves south across northern Arkansas.
Flash flooding is also possible as the line moves through.