Why I do free Analyses for the Little Guys and Why the Charlatans are Mad at Me 9 years ago
In 1998 I left a job in industry where I was the senior chemist and only perfumer (at the time) for a medium sized well respected essential oil and fragrance company to pursue a career on my own as a consultant to the fragrance, flavor, and essential oil industries. In 1999 I started Essential Oil University ( essentialoils.org ) as a paid subscription database that was and still is the largest online database for the literature reference reports of GC/MS analyses of essential oils. In 1999 my business started transitioning because so many people who were sending me samples for testing were asking me where they could also purchase the good oils. Many of my clients could not afford to go direct to source because they only needed to purchase a few kilos here and there so I gradually started bringing in essentials oils in small bulk quantities and breaking them down into smaller quantities for my clients who wanted to get pure oil and get it from a source that they could trust would do the proper quality controls before selling it to them. I was in an ideal position to do this because not only was I testing for end users and small retailers and wholesalers in the US but I was also testing for many producers internationally so I had and extensive database of direct distillers of oils and most all of them knew me because of my analytical testing business. Because of the these relationships established as a trusted analyst these suppliers would ship oils to me without ever requiring money up front, many times they would even pay for analysis reports with oil so that I could then turn around and sell for more than I would have received for just the report alone. That first year of selling essential oils from the basement in my house I can remember we did a whopping $90,000 in sales in sizes ranging from 1 ounce to 1 kg. My first website was very rudimentary and I actually programmed the entire thing myself. It had a very crude order submission system but people were willing to put up with this crude system because they knew my reputation for quality. This was the birth of EOU as trusted source of wholesale essential oils which later blossomed into a successful business serving over 7000 customers worldwide with their wholesale essential oil needs. In the mid 2000s I realized I had to get professionals to build me a real e-commerce site so I spent over $20,000 to have a new site programmed that encompassed my growing EO Chemical Reference Database as well as an ordering system for wholesale quantities of oils all into a single site that would allow somewhat automated processing of credit card orders and accounting. To my knowledge, EOU was one of the first, if not THE first true wholesaler of essential oils, sourced directly from distillers, that was allowing online ordering with publicly accessible published prices. Even though I enjoyed my role as a wholesaler to all the mom and pop businesses out there, it was never really my intention to get into the sales of EOs and my passion was always in the analysis, research and education of essential oils and these were becoming areas I could not spend as much time in because I was having to spend so much effort on the sourcing and day to day operations of running a wholesale business. For the last three years or so of running the wholesale business I found myself loosing my passion because I was not doing what I really wanted to do. I knew I wanted to get back to my roots and that eventually I was going to have to make a change.
In 2011, I made the transition to take EOU back to its original roots as a consulting, analytical and educational company. It was at that time that www.essentialoils.org stopped all sales of essential oils and became a database only website and all the information there was then made available for free to everyone (previously it was only available to customers who were buying oils from EOU). So that I would not let down my 7000+ businesses customers who had come to rely on EOU to be their warehouse I sold off the sales division of EOU and that site continued on under a new name which is owned by my brother. In order to save money and because I had already spent $20,000 on the development of the full website I just had a programmer friend split out the database section of the old site to become the new EOU site, this is why the sites look similar in menu structure etc. (but I am going to be revamping the EOU site this year, complete with a new iPhone app for the database). Even though the sales company is owned by a family member I will not publish the name of the company because I do not advertise or endorse any companies either publicly or privately and I don't ever want to be accused of advertising for anyone. People who are familiar with this site know that I do not allow the mentioning of company names whether it be for praise or for condemnation, and doing so will most likely get you banned. I want to keep this site an advertising free zone.
Anyone who knows me knows my passion for EO analysis and research and for this industry in general. Some have said that by me doing analysis for free which can allow people to expose the scammers is just hurting the industry. I would have to disagree. Yes it does hurt the FAKE EO industry, but I believe what I am doing is actually good for the TRUE EO industry. Right now we have the situation where most people just see one industry and don't realize there is a subculture of vermin out there who will sell any bit of cheap fake crap they can get their hands on and call it an essential oil. These people don't do analysis on anything they buy and so they have no idea what they are selling. They will just buy the cheapest thing they can find that is called "melissa oil" for example, not caring if its authentic or not and then turn around and sell it a 20 times cost as the real thing. In the specific of melissa oil, for instance, these unscrupulous suppliers will purchase a cheap melissa on ebay for example for say $177/kg. Anyone in the industry knows that true melissa oil sells DIRECT FROM SOURCE at anywhere from $2500 - $3500/kg. They will then turn around and sell this "melissa" oil, which is really nothing more than compound involving synthetic citral (citral is also in melissa along with a lot of other important stuff not found in the fake oil), as true 100% therapeutic grade melissa oil. And because they bought this fake "melissa" at such cheap price they are able to turn it around and significantly undercut everyone out there selling the true melissa oil and still make a massive profit. And the mom and pop businesses out there who are buying the real stuff as well as the duped end users cannot afford to do testing on these scam oils to prove that these oils are fakes so they are left in a position of helplessness. It is for the real suppliers of essential oils out there and for the end users everywhere there that I do what I do. The mom out there who just spent $30-$40 on a bottle of melissa oil is not going to spend another $150 to have it analyzed. This is what the scammers are counting on. I am sorry but I cannot just stand by and allow this to continue. I just thought if the buyers out there who know very little about true essential oils had somewhere they could go to confirm what they are buying is real then perhaps the scammers would think twice about jumping into this industry to take advantage of easy marks. This should also make the suppliers of true oils feel better because they have a source to site on what the true oil looks like and when their competitors who are selling fake oils at drastically cheaper prices get exposed then hopefully it forces them to stop selling these products as true oils. Only through education will people be able to learn how to spot a fake. That is what keeps me going and that is why I do analyses for free to people who cannot otherwise afford it and who have been tricked into buying an oil that is cheaper than the rate direct from source.
Obviously the scammers and criminals out there who get in this to make an easy buck by selling fake synthetic crap as true EOs don't really like it too much when I publish analytical results on their garbage EOs. Even though I never name any names of suppliers on this site, these angry buyers who have been lied to and swindled out of their hard earned cash end up going back to the scammers and demanding their money back. When this happens, inevitably the scammers get mad at me and threaten me in all kinds of ways that you could never imagine. Instead of these cretins getting mad at their own suppliers they get mad at me for doing the analysis and try to say that I have an ulterior motive because I have interests in other EO companies or because my brother owns an EO company or whatever else that they can try to grasp at to discredit me instead of actually addressing whether or not the analysis is actually correct. These lowlife scammers have even tried to suggest that I would falsely say that an oil is bad just so I can send them to my brother's company and that any time I say a sample is good from any of the HUNDREDS of companies who send me samples for analysis its only because it from a company who was supplied by my brother. Hopefully all of you know that this is an attempt to trash my name because these thieves have no other recourse. They cannot actually talk about their fake oils because they have no defense there, I stand behind EVERY analysis I do. If anyone sends a sample out to another analyst (one who is reputable and actually specializes in essential oils) who comes to a different conclusion about an oil I have stated is a fake then I will reimburse you 100% of your analysis costs. I will even refer you to other EO analysts if you have any questions about my the accuracy of my assessments.
Most importantly people should know that I am not wanting to go on a witch hunt or try to hurt any legitimate businesses out there. I realize that the small companies selling mostly good oils are going to get stung once in a while with an adulterated oil because they cannot afford to analyze every batch of oil. I want those of you in this position to know that I am not out to get you, I know you are trying to do the best you can and without the budget for outside testing or in house equipment and chemists that you are at an disadvantage. You are the companies who have spent the time to educate yourselves on what the true oils cost and how to properly promote your oils. But all the education in the world will not inoculate you from getting ahold of an adulterated oil from time to time. Rest assured I am not doing free analysis for anyone on any companies oils, so don't feel like you are being targeted. The people I am targeting are the thieves who are knowingly buying cheap synthetic crap at ridiculously low prices and then selling them online as pure oils on their websites, ebay and Amazon at prices that too cheap to even be possible given the current market bulk prices. These are the people who are most severely damaging the image of our industry and they must be stopped. Until now nobody had the ability or enough desire to put money into stopping them, I am the equalizer that allows anyone to expose a scam artist selling fragrance as pure essential oils.
Finally let me say that hundreds of you out there have asked me publicly and privately where you can get the good oils and if I would recommend a good supplier to them. I hope all of you out there realize that I would love to help you, believe me I would, but I just cannot recommend a supplier to you. The only time I will do this is if there is only one unique supplier of a very difficult oil to get that cannot be purchased anywhere else, and even in those cases I am reluctant to don't generally do this for people I don't know. I have too many companies that use me for analysis and if I started recommending some companies and not others it would inevitably cause clients to become mad at me if I got into the recommendation game. Not to mention it would destroy the trust that so many have placed in me over the years to give them unbiased results. I hope some of you out there will come forward and post here and verify that whenever you ask me to put you in touch with a good supplier that I always tell you, whether its in public or in private, that I will not endorse any companies. Sometimes my own brother gets mad at me for that but I have made a commitment to never do that and to never allow advertising on this site. Sorry for this long letter, but with all the lies going around I figured I should make a statement so people would not be fooled by the liars and scammers, and especially the CONVICTED CRIMINAL posting lies about me on his website and FB page.
Thanks for all your continued support,
