The Quality Makers: Bruno Lima of Pura

Originally from Brazil but raised and based in Utah, Bruno Lima is the founder of Pura: the best smart home fragrance system you will find. All their scents are created with clean, high-quality ingredients and are safe to be used around kids and pets. With smart app-controlled features, fragrance has never been easier. Get a glimpse into how this 10-year dream became a reality by reading Bruno’s inspiring story below.

I'd love for you to introduce Pura. 

We started Pura 10 years ago. The name is Latin, it’s also Portuguese, meaning pure and clean. Since day one, our idea was to create really clean fragrances that people can use in their home, in their cars and everywhere they go. We created a technology in a luxury beauty space, so it took a long time to develop, to engineer, to make. It's mind boggling to think about how much goes into the hardware. We spent over $100 million just creating the technology. And on top of that, each fragrance requires a team of scientists, evaluators, noses, fragrance markers. 

‍How is your personal journey related to the creation of your brand?

My co-founder and I wanted to create something in the technology space. I was studying manufacturing engineering technology. The only thing I knew before Pura was cleaning. I had a commercial cleaning company. In Brazilian culture, kids have their own account, which is the place you clean. If I wanted to be able to buy things, that’s how I’d have to pay for it. We’d clean car dealerships, schools, banks, you name it, we've done it. That's what I grew up doing. I didn't even have the vocabulary for a word like entrepreneurship. I grew up in this little Brazilian bubble, and to us, business people were those who had a cleaning company. 

When I entered college, I wanted to open a business, so I started a commercial cleaning company. It got larger and larger, so we ended up having to franchise it. That was the first time I was really exposed to the ‘business side’ of things. I actually ended up growing and selling that business, which led me to study the technology and manufacturing side. My Brazilian friend and I wanted to create something together, so we thought: what if we do something in fragrance? Brazil has a huge consumer fragrance culture. When a baby's born, you lather them in perfume. The fragrance aspect was key, because we didn't want to just be a technology company. We also didn't just want to do home fragrance. We wanted to truly be in this luxury space. How do we create something that's very elevated and beautiful, something that solves a problem that customers have? 10 years ago we came up with this idea but I can't tell you how many customers we've met with to really develop that idea. We wanted to understand what people were looking for and I credit our outcome to all those we spoke to overtime. We received so much confirmation, made so many adjustments, until we finally got to where we are today.

What do you think fragrance or scent can evoke, and why do you think this is something people seek out in their everyday lives?

I love that you asked this because I obsess over this question constantly. If you think about your five senses, your sense of smell is the only one that has a direct connection to the cortex of the brain. It's the only one your brain doesn't edit when it experiences that sense. All other senses go through a filtering process before you experience it. If every time you felt a table, it would trigger a memory, you’d be much too overwhelmed with emotion at all times. You’d be overstimulated. Smell has the power to not only trigger a memory, but a forgotten one. Somehow a memory can come back to you, which is why your sense of smell impacts your emotions, your moods, your ambience, more than any of your other senses. 

Fragrance can have this impact on a person that we don't understand. We recently hired a creative director from Apple, and we sent him and his wife to about 35 countries with a camera. We basically said: we want you to understand, come back and report to us, what does fragrance mean to people from all around the world? How does it impact us? How do different cultures understand it? The amount of words you have to describe ‘scent’ or ‘fragrance’ is already very telling of how it’s regarded in a certain culture. In America, we basically have fragrance, scent, and that’s it. There are certain cultures that will have 20 odd names for fragrance and scent. What we're trying to do, as Pura, is figure out how scent can best positively impact your life. Do we even, as an industry, truly know what fragrance is meant to be? That’s why we're collecting the perspectives of all these people from around the world.

If you look at the way we create fragrance –  it's art, it's love, and it’s a huge work of science as well. Everytime we launch a new scent, it's hard, because the customer just smells it and decides whether or not it smells good. They aren’t aware of how much time, love and energy goes into the creation process. This is something I’ve had to come to terms with. 

I love how committed you are to giving back to your community. How does that mentality and those actions seep into company culture and ethical manufacturing practices?

Call it what you will, whether it's karma, God, the universe, we just believe that at the end of the day, if all you did is start a business and make money, so what? What really leaves a lasting impression is: did you leave things better or worse off than when you found them? 

As a company, we're not very good at marketing how much we do for people. We've been helping people for 10 years, but we've just never told that story. To us, it's very much about who needs the most help and in what ways can we impact their lives for the better. We do that largely by giving back. We work with a handful of non-profit groups that are giving back to local communities and underprivileged groups to provide education, jobs, a sense of empowerment, and more. We’re so proud to be a part of what these organizations are doing. 

On the more internal side of things, I think a lot about how we can give back to our own community. How do we provide a work life balance to our team members? Do we think enough about their mental health? How are our employees being treated? A lot of companies that preach giving back and partner with external organizations, forget about implementing this kind of mindset in their own backyard. Even our manufacturers: are they provided with enough time to take their lunch? Do they get a break every day? Do they have an easy commute to their house? You look at the world, and there's factories that are locking their employees in with little to no pay. For us, we're not going to factories asking: what is the lowest price you can give me? We're going to factories asking: how do you operate? Are your operations ethical? Are you providing educational opportunities for the children of your employees? How are you helping the next generation?

Tell me about the different products you offer.

We offer a lot of different scents, about 350 of them. That’s because scent is so personal. I know it can be overwhelming to the consumer though, which is why we’re working on an AI tool that asks: how can I help you find the right scent for you? The more you use the AI tool, the better it will get at helping break down your taste in fragrance. The good thing is – if you’re looking for something, we have it. And if you don’t know what you’re looking for, we'll help you. 

When it comes to our devices, we have a number of products for your home and for your car. Our devices are special because they work off each other. Our app understands where everything is, and it'll adjust accordingly. A device that you're using in a small space versus a large space will work differently, and the fragrance that you're using works differently too. We actually have a whole team dedicated to this. Each fragrance has what's called top, middle and bottom notes. Top notes are the thing you smell right away when you plug in a fragrance. Over time, it moves onto the middle notes, which you smell most throughout the life of the fragrance, and then the bottom notes is that lingering scent towards the end. Your nose will quickly recognize a lighter scent, whereas it will take a longer time to recognize a heavier scent. Every time we create a scent, we have to look at all the notes that we put into it. We then code our device to understand what that looks like. Each device has a very specific preset for the weight of each scent. It'll run at a different temperature, so that you as a customer, when you plug in that vial, experience that scent in the best way possible.

What differentiates your brand from others in the fragrance industry?

In each industry, you have competitors. But we don't do competition. We do partnership, we do collaboration. I’m interested in creating this marketplace where our consumers can experience the best of each brand. There are certain customers who want the same scent across the board, in their home, their car, their laundry, their pets, but there are other customers who want to travel from one room to the next room and have a completely different fragrance experience. We want to be the scent landscaper to help you curate your dream scentscape. We think about how you’ve designed a room to make sure our scents can match that. A skyrise loft in New York City is going to look, feel and smell very different than a winter cottage in Colorado. We work with other brands and say: this is perfect for the person with a minimalist bedroom, or someone with a bohemian bathroom. I will never shy away from collaborating with another brand that can offer their incredible fragrances to be paired with our amazing technology. Such partnership can provide the best scent experiences for our customers.

In February, Pura partnered with the only Indigenous-led social enterprise in the world that produces sandalwood oil. The Martu people of Western Australia are one of oldest living cultures in the world today. The Pura x Dutjahn collaboration highlights the sacred and beautiful natural resource that has long held healing and strengthening powers for Martu, while creating an economic engine that will fund education, economic development, cultural preservation and land stewardship programming for Indigenous community members.

What do you hope people will take away from your brand when engaging with it? 

Instead of making a grandiose statement, I will say this: we aim to make your day a little bit better. You may be dealing with a boss you don’t like, or your sister might be upset because you scratched her car. And we can't fix those things. But we can make your bad days a little better, right? When you're home, even if your house is messy, it still smells good. And that's our goal. We can’t change your life, but we can make your day a little better.

Find the right fragrances and create your own scentscape with Pura.