a few hours in....
main ride is very very similar, tiny tiny micro tonalities emerge.....
could be an identical sister distillation or different storage parameters of the same batch.....
this is my own nose, strictly non bias, and its a win win for me, i smell divine....
But you’re correct about the opening. There is a tiny difference and it was the first thing I said to Rahel that they are different albeit by a fraction. But after spending hours with both and studying the evolution on the skin, they quickly merge as one and stay like that after 10 minutes or so. The minute difference is in the opening top notes, but not the heart or base which are pretty much identical.
Understandably, Ensar has not taken kindly to this comparison and in fairness I can understand why. Now some people here won’t like what I say next, but then I’ve never been one to keep my counsel to myself. While I don’t agree with his reaction which I think is a PR disaster and a lesson in how not to conduct yourself publicly, what you guys have to understand is that Rahel - in common with many vendors on here - is making the tiniest sliver of margins on this oil. He can do it as he has a day job and he does it because he has a passion for this and it’s not about the money for him as the day job meets his needs. But vendors doing this will mean that innovation doesn’t occur and reinvestment back into the industry is low as sales simply don’t generate enough to plough back to do so. It’s not a long term recipe for success, but that’s a problem that won’t go away anytime soon when you are dealing with oils of a calibre that in all honesty were - until recently - restricted to people with very large amounts of disposable income. Most of us can’t pay those prices so we are lucky to have guys like Rahel who offer these oils on a plate. Not sure how long these types of offers can last though.
It’s not the same for full time vendors like Ensar who have staff and much larger operational overheads and need to feed their families from this business and so in all honesty I think his price is justified and in no way I trust is the intention here to belittle or undermine Ensar Oud, but it just happened that with this one oud, someone else managed to find it and sold it for a much lower price out of which you can’t really make a living if repeated across all products. If anyone thinks that this exercise somehow proves that Ensar Oud are therefore doing something wrong, underhand or dubious in their pricing of the Chugoku Senkoh, I’ll tell you right now that I flatly disagree with you because there is a bigger picture here and considerations that most don’t understand or want to understand.
Notice that I learned about both oils back in August 2019, but there wasn’t a single word of this on the forum until last month. We aren’t here to “expose” others or conduct campaigns. Well that is certainly not my mission on here and that is not what this exercise is about. I understood that one was sold by an established vendor with all the costs associated with running a mature operation, while the other was sold by a newcomer with impressive links into the industry who wanted to establish his business and was willing to price oils at loss leader prices. It’s normal and economic reality always wins in the end, which is that these low prices are currently great for consumers, but cannot be sustained in the long term without damaging the very industry and products they love.
There are also vendors on this site who are full time like JK and ASO and if they are not patronised, the people who love Oud and spend on it will lose out in the end as businesses spend a lot of time and effort sourcing and/or distilling magnificent products that are genuinely rare. I honestly don’t understand a minority of people who don’t get this, but are more than happy to put $200 down for a Tom Ford perfume, the contents of which are literally worth a dollar or two.
On the flip side, I do want to commend Stephen for his fair review however and members have every right to conduct honest and objective assessments of products. After all, it’s their money that pays for them, but just remember that ultra low prices will turn out to be more expensive for the industry as a whole in the long run. There has to be a balance where vendors can make enough to make their operations self-sustaining and where they can put money into innovations, while keeping the resulting products accessible to people. One example where the vendors of this forum have transformed accessibility is to make oils widely available in 1g sizes. This was never heard of before Ouddict was founded where 2.5g .or 3g was the minimum, unless you wanted a sample.