Meet Michael & Kyle Mott-Kannenberg of East Nashville

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael & Kyle Mott-Kannenberg, co-founders of OSM Olfactory Sense Memory based in East Nashville. 

Conceived in 2016, OSM Olfactory Sense Memory, was born from the desire to artistically share their memories through scent with the rest of the world. 

They strove to create a fragrance line that would include all the things they loved – scent, visual art, design, and human connection. 

Kyle’s background in chemistry combined with Michael’s background as a visual artist and creative work in the fashion industry made the perfect combination of the two to design OSM. 

Trained in the classic style of perfumery Kyle prefers to toss out the rules he’s learned and build fragrances that evoke a feeling or a memory. Less interested in the classic, commercial style of top, middle and base notes, he creates fragrances in a more artistic and non-linear way. 

The fragrances are made up of between 75-90% natural ingredients. The synthetic ingredients are there because they are either nature identical or are replacements for materials that are either not sustainable or obtained from animals. The fragrances are cruelty free and vegan. 

The labels are collages of memories created by Michael, they represent the composition of scent that are in the bottles. Much like an impressionist painting, from afar you get one view and getting closer you can see all the strokes and pieces that make it up. The numbers of the scents are the year or age of the scent memory within the bottle. The bottles are grey to represent the grey matter (or brain) where memories are formed and stored. 

OSM’s inaugural memory scents, named simply 28, 84, 15, and 97, are visceral collages of deeply personal experience. Their eliciting themes range from launching ourselves into adulthood to lunging ourselves at the loves of our lives, from summoning the spirit of our sexual awakening to conjuring up our most free-spirited selves. OSM is worn by the reformed hedonist, still burning with the inner lust of their wilder times, though now enjoying life with a more refined, sophisticated palette. All fragrances are crafted in small batches from sustainable materials, hand-blended, and bottled with passionate care in their East Nashville studio.

OSM’s 15 ‘Foreverness’ received a notable nomination from The Art + Olfaction Awards for best new Independent Fragrance of 2019. After garnering attention in the fragrance world from the A+O Award nomination, the brand was approached by companies to create a fragrance for their brand. This led to OSM launching BLEND by OSM, a boutique fragrance lab that develops fragrance formulas to be applied in various forms of product, from perfume & incense to atmosphere sprays & home cleaning products. The company specilizies in micro-production, allowing smaller companies a more attainable way to foray into fragrance. 

OSM plans to release 3 new scents in the coming year.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?

The biggest struggle is being two people doing ten people’s jobs, all while raising our almost 6-year-old son and relocating to a new city during the pandemic. Of course, the obvious challenges of being married and business partners are there. However, we have learned to stay in our lanes, so to speak, for a smoother long-term ride. Keeping a sense of humor and a big-picture perspective is a key to keeping the balance, and when taking work pressure too seriously, having a kid who always reminds us what is truly important, The Octonauts! haha! 

Thanks for sharing that. So, you could tell us a bit more about your work.

OSM is about exploring connections, connections between people, connections between the neurons that make memories, connections to time and place, connections between images and scents and connections between humans and the planet. 

It is well known that our brains have a deep connection to scent and memory; the brain stores a memory through a network of neurons that associate with one another. This lattice work is what we now know to be a memory. Similarly, in the perfume itself, links are made between molecules, which, when combined, make up something greater than its parts. To this end, one could say that the perfume is already a memory, just waiting for the wearer to let it compose a memory in their brain. 

We are conscious of our carbon footprint and its effects on the planet, so we want our fragrances to be sustainable and our packaging to be as minimal as possible.

We are also conscious of our social responsibility. As an LGBTQ+ company, we believe in equality. Therefore, we support and donate a percentage of profits to various LGBTQ+ charitable foundations and organizations.

What are your plans for the future?

We are releasing new fragrances from OSM, launching new fragrance brands, producing retail pop-up events around Nashville, and eventually opening an experiential retail brick-and-mortar where customers can experience working in the fragrance lab with Kyle and shop some of our favorite indie fragrance brands and artists we admire from around the globe.

Pricing:

• $7 for a 1.5ml sample size spray
• $24 for a discovery set of all 4 scents in 1.5ml size sprays
• $24 for 8oz spray bottle of room perfume + linen spray
• $60 for 15ml travel size spray
• $135 for a 50ml spray bottle

Contact Info:

• Website: www.osmperfume.com / www.blendbyosm.com
• Instagram: @osm_perfume
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/osmperfume