Mahmood Chowdhury, 37, worked for a shipping company in Bangladesh before he came to the United States two and a half years ago. Today he works at New Kor Trading Incorporated, a three-month-old perfume shop in Manhattan on Broadway between 28th and 29th streets.

“I never thought I’d work with perfumes, but it’s a good business here,” Mr. Chowdhury said, turning to ring up one customer’s purchase of three 1.7-ounce bottles of Flower by Kenzo, which New Kor sells for $28 each – roughly half the typical list price.

“People always buy a lot when they come here,” Mr. Chowdhury said, closing the register. “This is a good business, and it’s a very good business for Bangladeshis.”

The first Bangladeshi immigrant to work in a perfume shop in the neighborhood is said to be Mohammed Islam, 56. According to his son Rafiul, 21, Mr. Islam opened his first store in 1991, when there were only four or five other such stores in the area.

In the past few years, Bangladeshis, one of the city’s fastest-growing immigrant communities, have moved into the discount-perfume business. Today there are 15 perfume shops owned by Bangladeshis on Broadway between 27th and 31st streets, most of which have opened in the past five years.

Rafiul Islam, who helps manage his father’s Al Maya and Universal Perfume shops, said: “A lot of the Bengali shops today are owned by people who were once our employees, so you could say we served as a gateway for them.”

According to the 2000 Census, there were 28,269 Bangladeshis living in the city. In 1990 only 4,955 Bangladeshis were counted in New York City. The 471% growth from 1990 to 2000 far outstripped not only the 9% growth of the city’s overall population but also the 71% growth of the total Asian population in New York City.

Most Bangladeshis living in the city came to America after 1990, according to the director of the Asian American Center at Queens College, Madhulika Khandelwal.

Ahmed Giash, who opened B&R Perfume & Cologne Incorporated a year and a half ago, said that he came to America six years ago in search of employment opportunities and that several of his family members have joined him in New York.

Whether Bangladeshis enter with family reunification visas, under the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, or with employment visas, Ms. Khandelwal said, their main goal is to come to the United States, especially to New York City, for jobs.

The executive director of the American-Bangladeshi Friendship Association, Morshed Alam, said Bangladeshis’ foray into the perfume shop industry makes sense.

“It’s a business that requires less investment and that is more accessible to immigrants,” Mr. Alam said.

A saunter down Broadway and into other perfume shops makes it clear that the strip’s discount perfume shops are dominated by immigrant groups. Indian Marwaris, Pakistanis, and Koreans expertly navigate the 3-foot-wide spaces between the glass counters that run around their narrow stores, and the shelves stacked floor-to-ceiling with designer fragrances.

“When people move here, they start building occupational, economic networks,” Ms. Khandelwal said. “At its simplest, this is a question of labor supply and demand.”

She called the Broadway perfume shops an example of a “new ethnic niche” for the 21st century, similar to what laundry services were to the city’s Chinese immigrant community in the last century.

If the “wholesale” perfume shops on that part of Chelsea are almost all owned and operated by Asian immigrants, diversity prevails on the other side of the counter. Mr. Giash, for one, said most of his customers are either typical New Yorkers or tourists from all over the globe.