Should I Use Fragrance to Cover the Rubber Smell in a Sneaker Store?

No, and I will set out exactly why rather than just asserting it. Start with what a fragrance does. It puts scent molecules into the air. It does not act on anything already there, and we make no claim that any SOSA product removes, neutralises, eliminates or absorbs an odour, or that it cleans, purifies or disinfects air. So when you add a scent to a room that is producing rubber, you have not replaced the rubber. You have a room containing rubber and a room containing fragrance, at the same time, and a person walking in from the street meets both in the first second. Two smells are worse than one, and they are worse in a specific way: a strong pleasant scent sitting on top of a strong material smell is a combination people recognise instinctively as concealment, even when they could not tell you what they are smelling. A plain rubber note reads as a shop full of new shoes, which is at least honest and, in a sneaker store, arguably part of the appeal. Rubber plus a sweet floral reads as a room with something to hide. Then there is the escalation problem. The owner who tries this almost never stops at one attempt: the rubber is still there, so the level goes up, and up again. Meanwhile they have stopped being able to judge it, because anyone who stands in a scent all day acclimatises to it within days while every arriving customer does not. That is how stores end up at levels their own staff quietly hate. And the rubber never went anywhere, because it has a physical source: a large mass of vulcanised rubber, EVA foam and solvent cement in a small volume of air, in a building that is cooling its air rather than changing it. That responds to four things, none of which I sell. Genuine outside air moving through the space. Opening cartons at a back door or under extraction rather than mid-floor. Rotating stock so no carton sits sealed for months. And a stockroom door that shuts itself, because the stockroom is the densest source in the building and vents onto your floor every time it opens. Do those and the room changes for nothing. Afterwards, if you want a signature, a cool dry citrus is the right register for a sneaker floor - but that is a different question, taken later, at a level set low. Ask for a store scenting plan and we will happily tell you it is not time yet.