Black Friday @ EO

[Ensar Oud]

ARCHIPELAGO

People would like to see oud sell for what it used to fifteen years ago. They’d like to think away the Chinese market and the extinction of wild agarwood. They’d like to see their democratic ideals spread and magically undo years of incense-grade mumbo-jumbo and finally offer affordable oud to the masses. Affordable, but still ‘top-quality’!

Well, friends, here you’ve got an oil for as low as I can go, without tampering with the Oriscent aesthetic one shred. The raw materials that went into the boilers are all wild, from the exact same jungles as the original Archipelago from 2005. The oil’s been aged for 2 years, and I’m ignoring those two years worth of inflation and interest-equivalent appreciation any sane businessman would take into account. Let’s also forget the zakat paid on the oil during those years. Let’s call it Agar Spring and celebrate the start of 2017 with a cheer and ‘hear hear!’ for oud democracy and bargain prices.

Companies have advertising budgets. They invest in PR events. Sometimes, they sell a product at a loss, just to prove a point. If you think you could offer high-grade wild oud at this price without seriously loosening up on your quality control or without taking a financial hit, then I can’t help you.

With Archipelago, you get a timeless classic at basically the same price it sold 15 years ago… A good spread of fresh pine leaves, vanilla and cedar, i.e. the freshness that’s characteristic of an awesome Borneo. Throughout the scent, you get whiffs of an intoxicating mentholated wood chord, if you can imagine that – a piercing sensation in the way minty notes strike you, but toned down and slightly more raw/sweet like a gentle infusion of ambergris and peeled bark, revealing a sweet, sappy citrusy note unique to fine Indonesian ouds. This feature makes this oil immediately likeable and super accessible (you can wear it to work no problem!).

There’s no Maroke in this one, so up against Archipelago 2008 you’re getting less black, less dark – the original Archipelago’s beauty intact. With just the right dose of jungliness to turn the earthy dial down a notch and the gyrinops-inspired green tones up… especially in your maiden whiff, where it’s strikingly oudy in a way that kinda reminds you of a clean Sumatran (and no, there’s no Sumatran wood in here).

Show me where you can find such an intricate display of distinct scent notes in an oil extracted from low grade agarwood. And how on Earth you could get that Sumatran-like oudy oomph without a few years aging? And at this price…

Hey, I’ll make it easy for you. Just go on Facebook and order oud directly from the ‘source’. It’s way cheaper than anything you can ever get on this website. This way, you can be content that your bottle is in fact from wild wood – high-grade wild at that. You can rest assured that the trees weren’t tampered with and that there were no inoculants used in the process (obviously, nobody does that these days). You can sleep soundly knowing that it’s not common practice for 99% of distillers to mix not-agarwood-but-smells-like-agarwood oils into the mix and sell it as premium wild oud. And best of all, you can be sure that you get the very finest oud at the very lowest price, just like you can get a new car over at the Great Wall dealer, who I hear have just released a model that ’s just like a Rolls Royce, only much, much cheaper.

There are people who think that Oud Mostafa No 5 basically smells like Oud Ilyas. So, I don’t always know what to say, seeing that there will always be those who are fine with a swipe of DOP on one arm and an artisanal oud on the other, unable to tell the difference; who think that the leather in a Tata pick-up truck is actual leather. That oud like Archipelago will be lost on them is a shame. That it will be compared with far inferior concoctions is something I can do nothing about.

What I can do is offer you a top notch Oriscent classic – wild & naturally aged – at a #damn right, I’m making a PR statement price. As for the rest, I’ll let the oud do the talking!…

For a limited time, in addition to the new low price, save a whopping $91! We're going to Make Oud Cheap Again, and we're going to do it right. It's going to be amazing what we're going to do, and you're gonna love it.

 

[kooolaid79]

Can't wait to try this beauty! Thank you Sidi Ensar for sharing this beautiful Oud!

 

[Kruger]

I think Goethe’s Faust must have had the oud world in mind when he said that a man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days

Since the launch of the new Archipelago, there has been some sarcasm coming our way. Seeing that we have a right to defend our opinions, I wanted to say something about the recent reverberations.

Preface

We have no beef with any members criticising our work or our approach. If what they say is valid then it’s on us to mend our ways. If their remarks are hurtful without reason, we have the right to correct any misrepresentations.

We all agree that it’s fair game for any member on any forum to say whatever they like. What doesn’t fly is when one vendor attacks another.

Part 1

The issue here is not what’s being said. It’s WHO is saying it.

It’s one thing to pose as an expert and not be one, and a totally different thing to pose as a customer while being a vendor.

It’s one thing to speculate about the origin of raw materials used in a distillation and to wonder if a certain oil is Thai or Malaysian, but it’s a completely different thing to launch a smear campaign against a vendor while posing as their customer when you are in fact a vendor yourself.

So, for ‘members’ like X, Y, and other covert agents to go and criticise Ensar Oud under the guise of sincere customers and end users is foul play, as far as I’m concerned. In fact, for a member on a forum to tarnish a vendor, dressed as a customer of that vendor… while in reality himself being a vendor, that my friends is the very definition of a troll.

(Funny thing is we get accused of a shilling, while our customers write us and ask why they are being demonized on forums for posting a review. Many such legitimate customers, who genuinely wanted to share in this wonder community of ours, sharing their impression for the first time, have been banished out of ever contributing again, because of hothead members who didn’t like that they were passionate about our ouds.)

So, for somebody who pretends to be a customer while actually being a vendor to talk bad about a fellow vendor, shouldn’t they be called out for ‘bashing the competition’?

I have a better idea. Let such members simply show their true colors. Where vendors carry the badge of ‘Vendor’ (which implicitly dictates what they are allowed to say, or at least the way in which they are allowed to say it), let the people who are at the forefront of this campaign to undermine Ensar, Adam and Taha, carry the badge of 'vendor' too. Or at least let it be known who they really are and stop the pretending and put an end to their agenda.

In light of these facts, I’ll let you be the judge on who these people are, what their agenda is and why they say the things they say. If I were an end user, I would demand this from them: Stop claiming to be a customer and UNBIASED user, when you’re not. It’s not genuine and doesn’t offer any constructive contribution. (Hence, this post.)

Appendix

1.) About the V vial: The regular price for Archipelago is $390. Add $15 for the V vial = $405. We’re not offering a discount on the V vail option. I hope that’s clear enough.

2.) As for the new Archipelago being a marketing ploy… it absolutely is. Given the bare costs, it should realistically sell for no less than $475. Or, if you prefer the oil come in the most expensive V vail in the world, that’ll be $580.

However, for the record, it is very telling for somebody (a vendor, no less) to trash Royale No 5, who at the same time can barely tell the difference between Oud Ilyas and Oud Mostafa No 5 and who at the same time thinks Oud Ahmad is such a mediocre oil – the only 100% sinking-grade distill available anywhere at this time (second to Wahid, if Adam still has it available), and indisputably the greatest oud available to anyone in the current market, and at the best value. Ask anybody who has a lit a pot in his life.

4.) About being disrespectful to our customers: Most vendors do indeed offer samples. Us included. Sometimes we don’t, just like other vendors sometimes also don't, for reasons that have been explained ad nauseam by us and others over the years. Feel free to browse our inventory to discover that we do have a shred of respect by offering samples of the majority of our oils. As for the times we don’t, please take that up with our dear brother Adam Coburn who often has to forfeit far more urgent work to pour those samples.

5.) Let me clear up another fact raised by our fellow vendor, regarding Royale No 5.

Take two oils. If the wood from the same jungle and having same distillation style doesn’t yield similar results then I don’t know what to say. Moreover, if anybody has any knowledge of aquilaria filaria and what it costs in the present day to purchase and distill, and knows that it is likely the lowest oil yielding species, you can gauge that for Royale No 5 to sell for $390 in 2016 is a MUCH greater bargain than Oud Royale 1 selling for $390 in 2005, irrespective of the difference in profiles.

As for Royale No 5 smelling so bad and poor smelling that there must have gone something wrong with the distillation, I guess most of the people you’re directly addressing don’t know what they’re talking about then. To see what your fellow members have to say about it, here’s a link to some of their reviews, for your reference. At least these people did not rush out in horror and sell their bottles.

6.) I swear, if I hear another sneer at the ‘End of Oud’, I’m going to choke. I don’t think we live on the same planet. In the words of Taha, let’s see you go out there and find them.

Our current wild distillations are for the most part done using vintage batches of wood, not fresh harvests.

Ask Taha and Adam, both of whom depend on the pulse of the jungle. Ask them about the abundance of trees. Ask them about the End of Oud. Or wait, I forget, they too are just making up stories and distilling cultivate wood selling it as wild… wait, what? Doesn’t that prove the point? Argh, my head hurts.

 

[Adam]

May God Almighty protect us all from the evil with in our selves and the evil surrounding us as He is indeed the best protector.
What can I say…
For few month now we not cook Sabah/Borneo wood… I would love to… However, my dear brother stopped buying woods from the hunters as they became too naughty…
asking crazy amounts of money for the crazy low grade wood that they bring from jungle…
Last tiny size sinkers were sold out few month ago… Since then I not seen any more…

 

[PEARL]

Point #4 and some other thoughts...

#4 discussed ad nauseum. For >95% of product-available. No need to waste more time on that.

When I had a problem with something Ensar said, I approached him like a man and got it off my chest, for all to see. I did so with honor, respect and absolutely no regard for retribution, because in my dealings with him I recognize him to be first and foremost, a man.

In my generation, even as a child we had honor among friends, there was even honor among thieves as they say. Don't get me wrong, there were often people out to take advantage of you, but I'm from Brooklyn so I learned to spot that quickly. For those people you had three options: defend yourself, strike first or stay in the house. I was outside everyday, I might get into quarrel or even physically fight a friend, but we had honor and by five o'clock everything would be back to normal. @Ensar you went outside, played with your friend, and had a disagreement about $; it's well past five o'clock and things aren't back to normal, and for that I'm truly sad.

On Dec. 5, 2016, last edited Dec. 13, 2016, ouddict.com administrator Ouddict put up a post about the issue. He used words like "intense discussion and cooperation between" and "sincere communication". I was personally very elated to see that there would be genuine efforts towards resolution of the issue. It was something that really made be believe that there could still be some humanity and dignity. At the time, in the back of my mind Brooklyn was still ever present, I was simultaneously hopeful and doubtful, but I viewed him as honorable for making the statements. To find out that there has been no effort on his part, even as far as traveling and spending money on nonessential things knowing he's in debt makes him, a whole lot of colorful adjectives I could use, but I'll just stick to dishonorable and dishonest.

 

[kooolaid79]

Point #4 and some other thoughts...

#4 discussed ad nauseum. For >95% of product-available. No need to waste more time on that.

When I had a problem with something Ensar said, I approached him like a man and got it off my chest, for all to see. I did so with honor, respect and absolutely no regard for retribution, because in my dealings with him I recognize him to be first and foremost, a man.

In my generation, even as a child we had honor among friends, there was even honor among thieves as they say. Don't get me wrong, there were often people out to take advantage of you, but I'm from Brooklyn so I learned to spot that quickly. For those people you had three options: defend yourself, strike first or stay in the house. I was outside everyday, I might get into quarrel or even physically fight a friend, but we had honor and by five o'clock everything would be back to normal. @Ensar you went outside, played with your friend, and had a disagreement about $; it's well past five o'clock and things aren't back to normal, and for that I'm truly sad.

On Dec. 5, 2016, last edited Dec. 13, 2016, ouddict.com administrator Ouddict put up a post about the issue. He used words like "intense discussion and cooperation between" and "sincere communication". I was personally very elated to see that there would be genuine efforts towards resolution of the issue. It was something that really made be believe that there could still be some humanity and dignity. At the time, in the back of my mind Brooklyn was still ever present, I was simultaneously hopeful and doubtful, but I viewed him as honorable for making the statements. To find out that there has been no effort on his part, even as far as traveling and spending money on nonessential things knowing he's in debt makes him, a whole lot of colorful adjectives I could use, but I'll just stick to dishonorable and dishonest. I won't yet call him a thief.

I don't like to speculate on anything, so I'll ask. What are the oils in question so I can be on the lookout in case he tries to sell them. If he tried to sell them BACK to you, he might try to sell them elsewhere.

Great write up Pearl. I too am very sad, reading things like rubbish with no backing to it. People are asking questions on that forum now, and how the topics are being changed by not answering the specific questions which were asked. Filling garbage in peoples eyes is totally unislamic and wrong! Things are being mentioned for example that Gahuru belongs to Ensar and Sidi Thomas does what Ensar tells him to do. Thats really messed up!

Why all this started was due to a payback? (just my opinion) of somewhat to Ensar?

 

[RobertOne]

Flyting would be a good choice, I think.

https://books.google.com/books?id=i3E1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA65&dq=The+Flyting+of+Dunbar+and+Kennedie&hl=en&ei=Gu_GS9r6KZb-mQO1h7HMDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie&f=false

Poetry? Ha!
We Scots deep fry that and use it as a melee weapon!

 

[RobertOne]

On a more serious and untroll note, this flame war is really unbecoming of the forum.

People may cast aspersions here and there, slander, porkies and great big whoppers but we should all remember that at the end of the day that when we buyers order samples and swipe.... the proof of the pudding is in the eating! (@Kruger . )

I love Oud.

The Good Stuff.

Those who sell beauty and happiness in a bottle at a fair price (not cheap but fair for the quality!) will be rewarded not just by dollars but with praise, gratitude and affection.

Those who do not will simply wander off to be forgotten in the sands of the mediochre.

Love and peace to all.

 

[PEARL]

@Ensar Insha' Allah he will follow through on his intention. My dear, you truly must have the patience of Ayoub, alayhi salaam.

 

[Ensar Oud]

Indeed, Allah is with the patient.

 

[Adam]

I was a bit sad… bottling Royal Vietnam I realised that there is only 2 x 2.5g full bottles of it…
All this was a result of a long travel, several days of going trough tons of "raw materials”,
2kg of the finest tiny pieces were selected, grinded, carried back to Sabah… soaking, cooking…
All this for 2 bottles of wild Vietnamese oud… hmmm… so I was like… how can I make good OUD cheap again???
It is NOT possible…
But then I seen those Legend prices… it makes me more positive… now I see that we can make Oud cheap again… indeed… indeed...

 

[kooolaid79]

@firdaous Very disappointed you said what you said about Ensar. You ought to know better about doing such a thing let along making a Giant list. Calling Ensar out like that and calling his Oud cheap quality what the heck is wrong with you? May Allah guide you!

 

[Ensar Oud]

Very quickly:

I said JK's sandalwood is Indian, but from the Northern region, to my nose. I don't see why that is a problem. I have sandalwood from Indonesia in my stash that means more to me than most Mysores. And my personal favorite is a very old Australian. Doesn't say anything. I've written full reviews of JK's sandalwoods as well as his natural perfume blends, which he can provide upon request. Great guy, and I have nothing against him.

If you think the 'non barn is a non Hindi' holds true, just take a whiff of Assam 3000, Muana LTD, and countless other batches that are currently aging in my archives. I always gave Taha credit for distilling the first non-barn Hindi, Aatma.

I expressed concern at the age of the Laotian trees to @Taherg, and we both mutually agreed that the wood must certainly be wild-sourced if that's what Taha reported, however from trees that were perhaps not much older than the oldest of organic trees. That was my take on that, reported to two guys who always showed me everything in their collections, hoping for an honest opinion.

If anyone has doubts about my willingness to 'deal' with Adam and Taha and JK, just ask them about the number of transactions that have taken place between us. I offered to buy Ceylon 1 for my personal collection, due to my sincere admiration for the oil. Adam sent me wood from Vietnam, and I offered him my Maroke dust for an upcoming distillation. JK has had multiple dealings with EO, not only as ouddict and fellow perfumer but also as a TCM practitioner (I believe he has a picture of my tongue somewhere in his files).

The bottom line is: Talebearing (willfully ruining ties between people by saying 'he said such and such about you') is the lowest of character traits, and a mortal sin in Islam. Our teachers stress the fact that anything posted on the internet goes viral instantly, so it multiplies the effect potentially many thousandfold. The Messenger of God has said: "The talebearer will not enter Paradise."

The only way to repent from talebearing is by mending the ties back again after having ruined them, which admittedly is oftentimes impossible to do. Those who encourage talebearing and assist in it have the same reward as the talebearer himself.

This same fellow would buy samples from all of the known vendors just to send them to me to smell, and repeatedly say "I will only keep EO bottles in my collection" – of which he sent me pictures to prove that his custom-made box contained only my oils. The minute a price I quoted him was 'higher than the last time', I lost favor with him, and he made it his business to embark upon a smear campaign. Talking about religion, someone who sells his trust and his brother over a discount is in desperate need of guidance.

 

[kesiro]

@firdaous Very disappointed you said what you said about Ensar. You ought to know better about doing such a thing let along making a Giant list. Calling Ensar out like that and calling his Oud cheap quality what the heck is wrong with you? May Allah guide you!

Jeez! No kidding. Just read that on ouddict. Where did that come from? You and I got called out by name as well. I don't even understand why. I have stayed out of this discussion on purpose. And for the record I have NOT been contacted by anyone from ouddict.

Lastly, the comment about Oud Ahmad is really perplexing, and not in a good way.

 

[RobertOne]

I was a bit sad… bottling Royal Vietnam I realised that there is only 2 x 2.5g full bottles of it…
All this was a result of a long travel, several days of going trough tons of "raw materials”,
2kg of the finest tiny pieces were selected, grinded, carried back to Sabah… soaking, cooking…
All this for 2 bottles of wild Vietnamese oud… hmmm… so I was like… how can I make good OUD cheap again???
It is NOT possible…
But then I seen those Legend prices… it makes me more positive… now I see that we can make Oud cheap again… indeed… indeed...

Oh Adam!

In Soviet Malaysia, Oud Swipes You!

Adam, I am willing to bet that 5g will be superlative! I am so looking forward to my first order arriving.

 

[kooolaid79]

Ok this is gone a little too far on low balling Ensar's oil. One member is mocking one of Ensar's oil (Aku Akira) saying there might be cannabis mixed inside. What the hell is he saying? There is a line you don't cross and some of the members there have crossed the line.

Mr Luigi, this person has accused you of being Ensar and vice Versa. Openly discussing with members that how only one Vendor is on this forum. It seems they want to keep playing this game no matter what and the childish things which some people find pleasure in want to continue. Very sad and disturbing!

 

[kesiro]

Ok this is gone a little too far on low balling Ensar's oil. One member is mocking one of Ensar's oil (Aku Akira) saying there might be cannabis mixed inside. What the hell is he saying? There is a line you don't cross and some of the members there have crossed the line.

Mr Luigi, this person has accused you of being Ensar and vice Versa. Openly discussing with members that how only one Vendor is on this forum. It seems they want to keep playing this game no matter what and the childish things which some people find pleasure in want to continue. Very sad and disturbing!

I have stayed out of the turmoil on purpose as my role as a moderator is just that, to moderate. The thread on ouddict has descended into self parody along with it's participants. I do not understand the vitriol on ouddict, especially towards me (moderator) and others here who I know to be only genuine enthusiasts of oud, you very much included my friend. I, like yourself, are here to learn and share, that's it. No hidden agenda, no ulterior motives, no secret agent crap. We think for ourselves and are very capable of critical thinking.

Edit: Looks like a ton of posts were deleted there, thankfully.

 

[MEKWT]

ARCHIPELAGO

People would like to see oud sell for what it used to fifteen years ago. They’d like to think away the Chinese market and the extinction of wild agarwood. They’d like to see their democratic ideals spread and magically undo years of incense-grade mumbo-jumbo and finally offer affordable oud to the masses. Affordable, but still ‘top-quality’!

Well, friends, here you’ve got an oil for as low as I can go, without tampering with the Oriscent aesthetic one shred. The raw materials that went into the boilers are all wild, from the exact same jungles as the original Archipelago from 2005. The oil’s been aged for 2 years, and I’m ignoring those two years worth of inflation and interest-equivalent appreciation any sane businessman would take into account. Let’s also forget the zakat paid on the oil during those years. Let’s call it Agar Spring and celebrate the start of 2017 with a cheer and ‘hear hear!’ for oud democracy and bargain prices.

Companies have advertising budgets. They invest in PR events. Sometimes, they sell a product at a loss, just to prove a point. If you think you could offer high-grade wild oud at this price without seriously loosening up on your quality control or without taking a financial hit, then I can’t help you.

With Archipelago, you get a timeless classic at basically the same price it sold 15 years ago… A good spread of fresh pine leaves, vanilla and cedar, i.e. the freshness that’s characteristic of an awesome Borneo. Throughout the scent, you get whiffs of an intoxicating mentholated wood chord, if you can imagine that – a piercing sensation in the way minty notes strike you, but toned down and slightly more raw/sweet like a gentle infusion of ambergris and peeled bark, revealing a sweet, sappy citrusy note unique to fine Indonesian ouds. This feature makes this oil immediately likeable and super accessible (you can wear it to work no problem!).

There’s no Maroke in this one, so up against Archipelago 2008 you’re getting less black, less dark – the original Archipelago’s beauty intact. With just the right dose of jungliness to turn the earthy dial down a notch and the gyrinops-inspired green tones up… especially in your maiden whiff, where it’s strikingly oudy in a way that kinda reminds you of a clean Sumatran (and no, there’s no Sumatran wood in here).

Show me where you can find such an intricate display of distinct scent notes in an oil extracted from low grade agarwood. And how on Earth you could get that Sumatran-like oudy oomph without a few years aging? And at this price…

Hey, I’ll make it easy for you. Just go on Facebook and order oud directly from the ‘source’. It’s way cheaper than anything you can ever get on this website. This way, you can be content that your bottle is in fact from wild wood – high-grade wild at that. You can rest assured that the trees weren’t tampered with and that there were no inoculants used in the process (obviously, nobody does that these days). You can sleep soundly knowing that it’s not common practice for 99% of distillers to mix not-agarwood-but-smells-like-agarwood oils into the mix and sell it as premium wild oud. And best of all, you can be sure that you get the very finest oud at the very lowest price, just like you can get a new car over at the Great Wall dealer, who I hear have just released a model that ’s just like a Rolls Royce, only much, much cheaper.

There are people who think that Oud Mostafa No 5 basically smells like Oud Ilyas. So, I don’t always know what to say, seeing that there will always be those who are fine with a swipe of DOP on one arm and an artisanal oud on the other, unable to tell the difference; who think that the leather in a Tata pick-up truck is actual leather. That oud like Archipelago will be lost on them is a shame. That it will be compared with far inferior concoctions is something I can do nothing about.

What I can do is offer you a top notch Oriscent classic – wild & naturally aged – at a #damn right, I’m making a PR statement price. As for the rest, I’ll let the oud do the talking!…

For a limited time, in addition to the new low price, save a whopping $91! We're going to Make Oud Cheap Again, and we're going to do it right. It's going to be amazing what we're going to do, and you're gonna love it.

This 99% would include you because the 1% is not you my friend and your insinuations are baseless and unfounded regarding the mixing of oils with synthetics, and maybe 99% of the 10 distillers you know do this. Ensar you are not the only person on the planet who has access to what we in the business define as superior wood and oil. The difference between you and us, is we do not give comic book names and sell BS stories with our oils and wood. The best one is you seem to continuoisly chant "the end of oudh is near". Well I have news for you, maybe the end of Ensar Oud is near but all of us are going strong and will continue to do so for many many years to come. One less vendor, or one more vendor isnt going to disrupt the market.

While I did appreciate the odd story once in a while which were great to read at bedtime, the same overall theme remains the same, and you airing out someones personal laundry to the public heavily reflects on you as a person. Branch out and try something new. Be creative and maybe, just maybe there is space for you in our market. But as long as you continue down the road you are on, you will fail. Lets face it, your customer base as become all the more wiser and the gig is up.

By the way, I can offer you a chance to distill very high quality wood with a very close friend who wont rob you for $500k, so you can see what you have been losing.

Happy Days

 

[Ensar Oud]

This 99% would include you because the 1% is not you my friend and your insinuations are baseless and unfounded regarding the mixing of oils with synthetics, and maybe 99% of the 10 distillers you know do this. Ensar you are not the only person on the planet who has access to what we in the business define as superior wood and oil. The difference between you and us, is we do not give comic book names and sell BS stories with our oils and wood. The best one is you seem to continuoisly chant "the end of oudh is near". Well I have news for you, maybe the end of Ensar Oud is near but all of us are going strong and will continue to do so for many many years to come. One less vendor, or one more vendor isnt going to disrupt the market.

While I did appreciate the odd story once in a while which were great to read at bedtime, the same overall theme remains the same, and you airing out someones personal laundry to the public heavily reflects on you as a person. Branch out and try something new. Be creative and maybe, just maybe there is space for you in our market. But as long as you continue down the road you are on, you will fail. Lets face it, your customer base as become all the more wiser and the gig is up.

By the way, I can offer you a chance to distill very high quality wood with a very close friend who wont rob you for $500k, so you can see what you have been losing.

Happy Days

We try to not insinuate, my brother, but rather report that which we see with our eyes as simple facts of the market. Most of the major houses in the ME have salaried chemists on the payroll, who are in charge of molecularly isolating certain scent compounds that are then mixed with other things, standardized and homogenized for vast consumption by the masses, and then put in a fancy bottle. In many cases, the bottle is worth more than the oil it contains.

Actually, if I count the number of distillers I know it's probably a lot less than 10. I've tried dozens of distillers' oils one way or another, but have found it wise to stick to my one or two loyal craftsmen (@Kruger being one of them) over the years, mind my own business about what I distill, and do things the way that suits my own particular taste.

I think you've highlighted the crux of the problem we all face in the oud community, in some of the things you mentioned. I think the crux of the problem is that most people see this as a 'business' gone 'fraternity' gone 'madhouse' because of all the different assumptions that are made, and with which everyone judges others. I have customers from every corner of the globe, and everyone brings their own cultural values, morals and aesthetics to the table, which leads to radically different expectations with regards to their favorite 'vendor'.

The problem is, I don't see myself as a vendor at all. Hence the confusion and heartache for some of my customers. Quite simply, I have a particular aesthetic that I like to purvey. Others have their own aesthetics. Your cultural norms and values are radically different to mine. You cannot judge what I do unless you put yourself in my shoes and see the world through my eyes, and smell the wood through my nose. I am NOT willing to put myself in your shoes and do something for the sake of selling merchandise in a 'market'. It's like going to a painter and saying he can make a lot more money by investing in mass produced replicas of great originals, rather than focusing on the 'vision' or aesthetic the particular artist has in mind.

I am not here to dominate your market. Abdul Samad and Ajmal have already done that, much better than I can ever aspire to. What I am here to do, and which pains certain other 'artisans', is to express myself freely and fully the way that my own God-given nose smells fit. If you like smelling what I smell, you're welcome to partake in my craft, my dear. If you don't like it, you're free to click away and not bother yourself with my hallucinations.

As for the 'personal laundry' bit, I'll be the first one to tell you that talking about others in a way they dislike is a sin. Hence, each time someone talks about 'genius' when referring to something on my website or refers to me as someone 'money hungry' because I have overheads and costs I need to meet each month, I don't like it. When someone is a vendor offering samples of his upcoming lines to buyers in private, yet to the public he and his partner pretend to be genuine end users and customers just like everyone else, that needs to be called out for what it is. I don't see that as laundry.

I don't know where you grew up, my brother, but in New York City we tend to be up front and direct about certain things. There is no laundry here: The man is a vendor. He says he runs an independent forum, unaffiliated with any brands, yet he has two brands he's already advertised to buyers of my old oils he likes to resell. Some people on that forum keep calling for transparency. Maybe some of those calls should be addressed at the administrators. Where I come from, very few people would put in overtime in a venture where they have zero financial interests, as a mere service to community.

If it came to 'airing laundry' as you say, the discussion wouldn't be focused around this one fact. The way someone conducts business is pertinent information, and is not dirty laundry as far as I see it. I wonder how you would feel if someone took tens of thousands of $$ worth of merchandise from you and never paid you, then launched an 'anonymous' platform to undermine you and tarnish your image.

Wa alaikum as salaam.

 

[kesiro]

This 99% would include you because the 1% is not you my friend and your insinuations are baseless and unfounded regarding the mixing of oils with synthetics, and maybe 99% of the 10 distillers you know do this. Ensar you are not the only person on the planet who has access to what we in the business define as superior wood and oil. The difference between you and us, is we do not give comic book names and sell BS stories with our oils and wood. The best one is you seem to continuoisly chant "the end of oudh is near". Well I have news for you, maybe the end of Ensar Oud is near but all of us are going strong and will continue to do so for many many years to come. One less vendor, or one more vendor isnt going to disrupt the market.

While I did appreciate the odd story once in a while which were great to read at bedtime, the same overall theme remains the same, and you airing out someones personal laundry to the public heavily reflects on you as a person. Branch out and try something new. Be creative and maybe, just maybe there is space for you in our market. But as long as you continue down the road you are on, you will fail. Lets face it, your customer base as become all the more wiser and the gig is up.

By the way, I can offer you a chance to distill very high quality wood with a very close friend who wont rob you for $500k, so you can see what you have been losing.

Happy Days

I am going to make this short and sweet. The spirit of your post is not appropriate to the decorum here. Reasonable disagreement and discussion are healthy and informative, but your post includes neither. I am going to ask that you please edit out the personal attacks on your own. Otherwise I will do it for you. And do not even try to go down the road that I am protecting Ensar or whatever. That would insult my intelligence and I do not take kindly to that. Ensar is free to pursue his own interests and business practices as he sees fit. You can pursue your own. Let the market decide the rest. Good night.