Bad Suppliers Will Scrooge Ya

Don't Get Toadally Scroodged
This will probably be my longest post ever here, but the subject is coming up so often on my group, weekly, in fact, I was urged to go public with it.

We recently had a chat going on my *private* natural perfumery (NP) group about NPers receiving fake aromatics from suppliers they trusted. It's not the first time this has been brought up, and it seems the same guilty suppliers are still selling bunk. Bad news for the naturals industry, since they misrepresent their oils, and we NPers are dedicated to using only natural aromatics.

Con artists, ripoffs, fakery and just plain lying have plagued the perfume industry for centuries. Nothing new under the sun there. When aromatherapy (AT) became popular a few decades ago, many enthusiasts jumped in and started importing oils and selling them to hobbyists and in turn, professionals, as the discipline grew.

I want to bring this discussion out in a more public venue such as this blog, since many newbies enter the field every day, and may not be in the private yahoo group to hear about the dirty side of the industry.

This greed and unresponsiveness of these suppliers is a terrible blight, since many of the hobbyist and beginning business people in NP shell out big money for their supplies. Of course, the bunk aromatics discussed are big money items, although even the rather inexpensive lavender oil can be tweaked by con artists to extend the oil while lowering the cost.

I'm just going to share some short recounts of what has happened to either me or my colleagues over the years. It will give you an idea what to look out for, but by no means offer you protection.

Suppliers Who Just Don’t Know the Product, Or an Honest Mistake?

AT came before NP for most of us. AT suppliers joined AT chat groups and many of us became friendly with them, and believed their spiel. For the most part, many were very honest and upfront, and if they found they were carrying an oil that was tampered with, they removed it from their site.

We also trust the supplier to know their aromatics. One, who touted she had everything GC’d (a GC is a gas chromatograph machine and the baseline test is called a GC)and vetted everything from the source on down, sent me almond oil two times when I ordered Jasmine sambac. Sambac is a darkly-colored, very highly-scented absolute. I called and asked what’s up, and was blown off with the excuse she didn’t like sambac. Well, where’s the GC I asked? No answer? Finally, on the third shipment, I got the sambac.

No explanation, no apology, dead silence from someone obviously caught selling an item she wasn’t familiar with, hadn’t had GC’d, and hadn’t even bothered to read the Arctander book she often said was her Bible to check the description. After that, she avoided my emails and phone calls, a withdrawal from someone that had called me four or more times a day occasionally, especially when she was going through a truly horrible patch of bad health and deaths in her family and that of a close friend. I suppose shame makes folks withdraw, but I’d rather she had withdrawn the bunk oils she was selling (see below for more info.)

The part that saddens me is how many novices ordered the pricey sambac and got the almond oil and never knew the difference? There are many novices out there spending lots of money to sample small amounts of pricey absolutes and Eos, and I’m afraid to think how often stuff like this happens.

Another supplier, not highly respected among AT or NPers because she serves the soapers industry (a nasty, unfounded prejudice) sent me frankincense when I ordered a helichrysum sample. I called, she immediately apologized, and sent the correct item. It was a clerk's error. This person does not post on chats, keeps to herself, never touts she has GCs done on her products, just is a very, very successful businesswoman who does not fabricate.

Another supplier, very big on the West Coast that is known for the uneven quality of the products, sent me saffron abs instead of another oil I had ordered. Called them, immediate shipment of the correct item, no questions asked.

Sometimes it’s a simple administrative error – the person filling the bottle reaches for something on the shelf, is unfamiliar with the oil, and picks up the wrong bottle, ships the wrong stuff. I can see this happening with the bigger outfits, and they were the ones to immediately correct the mistake.

We often have newbies post on my group “I bought some *** for the first time, but it doesn’t smell like the description I’ve read, what does everyone think?” We help them ferret it out, and if it seems like something I’ve shown above, we tell them to contact the supplier. I think it’s the only way a newbie can be sure they’re getting the real thing, and it can really save them money and going down the wrong aromatic road with the incorrect oil.

Another AT supplier who now sells to the NP industry has a disclaimer on her site about an oil that the “sambac” seller was discovered to be supplying the NPers with that was blatently synthetic. They often go in on buys, and had a well-known kilo of fiddled Bulgarian rose otto a few years ago rather ruin their reps, so if you get some sweetly floral, pourable, light colored linden blossom oil, return it. And ask them to stop selling it please.

How the linden blossom absolute fraud came to light: I got a call from a NPer who was trying to obtain some true linden blossom abs for a last minute replacement for a submittal that was due the next week. She had contacted the woman who was the second-tier supplier and headed the blending group that issued the deadline, and was overnighted some LBA. Except this NPer was familiar with real LBA and was full of consternation as to what to do. The woman selling the LBA got it from the “sambac” seller. She thought it was the real deal. Obviously, despite heading a blending group (not being a perfumer herself) she didn’t bother to GC stuff, since she thought the sambac seller had. Whew. Following me? Turns out all the perfumers had purchased fake LBA. She still buys from “sambac” seller, doesn’t GC and well….

…..It’s really a minefield out there.

How Can France Export More Lavender Oil than it Produces?

Well, heck I don’t know. Martin Watt, a well-respected debunker and skeptic recounts the story of how he was visiting a French distiller, and when he wandered off from the tour, and went behind a building, he found 55-gallon drums of lavender oil, imported from Italy, I believe.

EDITED TO CORRECT - MARTIN WATT'S INFORMATION:

I was recounting Martin's story from memory, and I got a lot of the details wrong. It's been years since he related it to me, so please forgive me. Here is what Martin wrote me today:

You got the report on me wrong. The lavender issue was I was told by a
supplier of real lavender in the UK, that when his friend visited this
factory in France, what was in the backyard were barrels of ho leaf oil
for the linalool content, as well as the chemical that converts linalool
into linalyl acetate. That means perfectly genuine lavender was going
in the front door and tourists saw that distilled. What they got in
their little bottles though was a different ballgame. Yet these
tourists would swear blind that they "saw the lavender distilled so they
knew the oil was genuine".
His page http://www.aromamedical.com/articles/falseoil.html succinctly describes many of the pitfalls on a grander scale. Geared towards the AT industry, but very relevant to this article.

Many distillers, brokers and suppliers stretch and tinker with our aromatics. That is a fact of life. ATers will care if the lavender is stretched with linalool, or tweaked to smell better, since they demand stuff straight from the still. NPers are more open to a fiddled oil, since they aren’t looking for therapeutic efficacy, but scent. Still, dumping rose geranium oil into rose otto dramatically cuts the price and extends the oil, and both NP and AT folks shouldn’t accept that, that is blatent thievery: http://www.positivehealth.com/permit/Articles/Aromatherapy/frank55.htm

Hey, This Stuff Doesn’t Smell Very Good/Strong/Similar

Always sample first! You can’t always ask for a GC, but if you are an experienced nose, get samples. Your supplier should supply a batch and lot number for the oil you’re getting. If not, ask for that, for sure.

My buddy in Turkey sold me a Lavendin in 1999. I loved the stuff. When I got back to him two years later, that variety was sold out, and he said a lot of people didn’t like it, so that’s why he was carrying a new lavendin. Heck, stock can turn over much quicker than that, maybe in a few months.

If I had just ordered without asking first about the batch and lot number, I’d have gotten a really different smelling product. He would not have been in the wrong, I would have been in the wrong for not trying to ascertain the sameness of the product.

That said, quality of a product can vary from year to year due to weather, soil or other conditions.
The West Coast supplier who mixed up the saffron is known for uneven quality of the oils. I always sample first and boy, did they have a watery (weak) frankincense, but yowza! their fresh ginger from Indonesia is fabulous. Still, when I reorder, I’ll cite batch and lot number, and get new samples if that original one is sold out.

Summary

I’m not even going to address gardenia (Monoi folks use perfume oils, *maybe* are making gardenia absolute nowadays, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it), violet flower, hyacinth, lilac, freesia and many of the other supposed natural oils that are out there. A NPers started blending with some very pricey stuff purchased from a well-known AT shop in her city, and when questions were raised about these rarely-if-ever extracted scents, sent me samples of them. All bunk. She was out a LOT of money.

Many ask me to recommend suppliers. I do sometimes on my private group. On that group, I also demand that anyone who posts must have first hand knowledge of the deal that went down. It must have happened to them, not hearsay.

Why won't I publish a list of respectable suppliers? Because two suppliers had me fooled for years with their constant claims of GC'd oils, stringent demands from their sources, etc. One once sent a GC to a friend of mine. I had requested GCs from her, but always got excuses. I had the friend, whom she didn't know, request one. It was a generic GC, xeroxed on her letterhead, no date, no lab identified, etc. It would fool a newbie, but not me - I'd want the lab ID'd, the date, the lot and batch number, etc., not a xeroxed dummy GC. I still have it, like I have the GC from an Indian supplier that showed only peaks, no ID on the chem. So strange. The salesperson didn't know what the GC meant, and some of their oils were totally fake.

Get educated, get skeptical, get into a chatty community where discussions can remain private, like my yahoo group (otherwise have proof if the stuff is bunk if you go public – and I have proof about the linden, sambac and other allegations I’ve made here, but I haven’t named names) and remember that the herb and perfume industries are two of the most dishonest industries around. That’s sad to say, but it’s centuries old, and it’s not going to change any time soon. Even Martin doesn’t name names on his site – what’s the use? We all know who he’s talking about, for the most part, and if we don’t, at least we know what to look for.

The internet allows a newbie in Connecticut to hook up with a NPer group and suss out fake hyacinth, it helps a soaper perfumer in Wales learn that her linden and magnolia are very suspect. The AT and NP industries would not exist as they do without the internet, and we’re all very thankful for that. We’re all helping each other source good products, and the community is growing by leaps and bounds, and we’re creating beautiful perfumes made from as well-sourced-as-possible natural aromatics.

Then there's the story about the co-op buy of neroli from that No Cal company --- for another time, although I wonder how the suppliers that bought it passed it on to their customers, if they did so – thousands of dollars were at stake, or they'd suffer a loss. Be Careful, everyone!