Last time we posted about Charles Granville, we left off with his idea of perfumed snow, which was just one of many ideas he had. While Granville was in charge of Angelique, he used very creative methods to promote his perfume.

During the first few years of business, Granville orchestrated many stunts to promote his perfume. Angelique started out with just one perfume, Black Satin. So, when they came out with a new perfume, White Satin, they needed an effective way to promote it. Granville came up with the idea to have a plane fly over Wilton and scatter strips of blotter soaked in the scent! This got his perfume the attention he was aiming for. So much that it is still remembered today, like many of his promotional ideas.

Granville chose to celebrate Angelique’s first profitable month in June 1948 with a perfume bombing of LA. He got 12 Beechcraft Bonanzas mobilized, each with a pilot and a “bombardierette.” They dropped “bombs” by spraying perfume out of the airplane as they flew overhead! It is said that the scent didn’t really reach the ground, but they got plenty of publicity from it. Shortly after this, Granville started using machines to pump out perfumed bubbles; he had them sent all over the country for stores to use to promote his perfume. Granville even had perfume delivered in the form of a gigantic Easter egg by a helicopter!

The next big event occurred in 1959, when Granville was promoting Angelique’s newest perfume, Red Satin. He arranged for a flotilla of his friends’ yachts to form a square-mile formation off of Miami, on the Gulf Stream, and dump the perfume into the current. His goal was to have the scented “red mile” of water to reach the shores of England, bringing a lovely smell to them around Christmas time. Unfortunately, it is believed that the scent never did reach England. But it did puzzle ships’ crews in the Atlantic for some weeks after!

A couple of years later, in 1962 Charles Granville made the decision to sell Angelique. Then in 1967, he founded Celeste, where he continued to use his ideas to give the company the foundation it needed to last.  

To be continued…

Here at Celeste, we understand that individuals using cleaning chemicals do not want them to be hazardous. So we developed a set of standards, our Green Chemistry Standards, to ensure we provide safe and effective cleaning chemicals. Our products that meet our Green Chemistry Standards are both user and environmentally friendly.

We developed our standards based off of regulations and guidelines set in place to protect people and the environment. We follow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides. This publication ensures that any environmental product claims by companies are non-deceptive and justifiable. We also follow regulations set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The U.S. EPA created a Design for the Environment program. This program was implemented while working with industry, environmental groups, and academia to reduce the risk to people and the environment by finding ways to prevent pollution. Through this initiative, GreenBlue® developed the CleanGredients® database – the online resource for green formulation®. The database contains approved listings for surfactants, solvents, fragrances, and chelating agents. We use this database as a reference for chemicals to use in our formulations.

Ultimately, we at Celeste strive to develop products that meet specific performance criteria, ensuring their efficacy, and ensure that our products meet environmental criteria that can be substantiated. Our environmentally friendly products are marked with our Green Chemistry Symbol and meet the following guidelines.

The product must: have low or no volatile organic compounds (VOCs), have low or no hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), not contain any chemicals included in Title III of the Superfund Amendment and Re-authorization Act of 1986 (SARA Title 3), not contain any known carcinogens, use the best alternative green solvents, and be biodegradable.

These standards ensure that our products do not cause ozone depletion, have a low Global Warming Potential (GWP), and are not environmentally persistent. They also ensure that our products contain chemicals that have reduced hazards, low or no toxicity, and low or no VOCs. All this combined makes sure that our products that meet our Green Chemistry Standards are safe, user and environmentally friendly.

Celeste has a long and colorful history, due to its founder Charles Granville. He is remembered by many as being a very nice man and never ceasing to make people laugh. He and his friend N. Lee Swartout founded the company in 1946 in Wilton, Connecticut; as a perfume company called Angelique.

The two decided to start their own perfume company during their daily commute. They both worked in New York and spent around 3 hours a day on the train commuting from Wilton. Swartout worked as a manager for a bottle manufacturing company and Granville as an efficiency engineer.

When they started Angelique, they decided who would be the president with a simple coin toss! Granville won and became president and his first official action was to make Swartout treasurer.