For Aeron Co-founder and inventor Jeffrey Smith, growing up in a state where two percent of the population was black, he’ll be the first to admit, was a challenge.
“I had to handle more than I thought was my fair share of bullying and being made to feel different,” he says, noting that recent events which have reignited the Black Lives Matter movement dig up a lot of pain for him.
“I was having a good time in my life,” he says, “but when I went to school, I came to a rude awakening that I was somehow seen as different and that difference meant I was thought of as less-than because of the color of my skin.”
At the same time, Jeffrey notes that the pain of the discrimination he was experiencing led him to withdraw into his creativity and his own resourcefulness.
He became immensely interested in how objects work, taking apart anything he could find, including his brother’s toys which prompted retaliation, but no less a resolve to be curious.
A gift of a hobby set from his mother egged him on. A mentorship by the local hobby store owner who set aside, especially for him, a sort of Sid Phillips “toy story” collection of spare parts for his tinkering.
By age 8 he was an inventor of things. Nothing anyone could use right away, but early machinations of things that would become, for example, the creation behind the founding of Aeron Lifestyle Technology, Inc. in 1996: an aromatherapy diffuser for cars. The first of its kind to ever be made. This patented and clever original was sold to distributorships around the world, premiered on QVC home shopping channel, and eventually cracked open the door to a thriving retailer who has since built a network of specialty stores across the U.S.
Today, Aeron continues to service that national retail customer and a host of other national distributors from its six manufacturing and filling operations around the world, staking a world leadership position in the design, engineering, and making of fragrance diffusers and other lifestyle products for home, office and car.
“Today” for Jeffrey means living by the credo “out of adversity comes opportunity.” When faced with a challenge, he considers it an opportunity to elevate himself above the fray.
“I look forward to a day when we don’t see “race.” Race is a senseless division. We want to be judged by our character, integrity, and ethics. By what we create. We’re only in one race here and that’s the human race.”