OUR STORY
Our origins go back to deserts - well not literally but close!
I have always been a bit of a fragrance person and at a time when I was a broke teenager and could hardly afford my bus fare to college, I found a treasure of perfumes tucked away in my Uncle's wardrobe. These were all quality branded perfumes that he had received as gifts during his time abroad. To this day, I stand guilty of severely depleting his perfume collection.
My first ever experience of Oud came when I was a teenager. An old man sitting outside a mosque had laid open a rather large wooden carry case with colourful oriental and ornamental perfume oil bottles. He would carry the case from one mosque to another and wait for people to approach his stall after prayers. His livelihood was selling perfumes.
Having only experienced branded French perfumes (my uncle's) previously and with limited exposure to perfume oils, I sat down beside the old man to sample a few of his oils. With the prospect of a possible sale, he excitedly obliged and applied a dark brown coloured oil to my wrist saying: "if there is something that you should try, then it is this". Instinctively I rubbed the oil into my skin and smelled it. I was shocked! It was as if I had punched in the head. Such a bitterly strong smell! It was a smell that was not known to me and one that made me wonder: "how can someone even wear such a thing?". So I upped and walked away thanking the old man.
Little did I know, I had just had my first experience of Oud and it was a forgettable one to say the least, until....I moved to Saudi Arabia (KSA).
From the time I boarded my plane to KSA till the time I left the country nearly half a decade later, Oud was everywhere. It was in the malls where where Agarwood or Bakhoor would be burning outside the plethora of perfumes shops, it was in the mosques, it was in the old bazaars, it was at work, it was the fragrance that invariably followed men with white thobs and women with black abayas as if infused into their clothing - it was everywhere!
Surely this wasn't the same Oud that I had once experienced, or was it? It was different and it smelled...heavenly!
Well, as an Oud expert would tell you - and I am not one, at least not yet! - authentic Oud is bitter and strong at the outset but as it gets older and warmer, it transforms into this heavenly and entrancing sweet woody fragrance.
No wonder, authentic and genuine pure Oud is rare and worth its price in gold. And if someone tells you any different and tries to sell you an Oud that is cheap, rest assured, they are taking you for a ride or are on a ride themselves for that matter.
Yes, you can get various grades of Oud, extortionately expensive and not so expensive. Newly harvested & distilled Oud tends to be cheaper compared to Aged Oud (a bit like old wine really - the older the better). The price of Oud (chips and oil) also correlates to the variety and rarity of the trees that it is harvested from and its origin - Indian Oud and South Asian Oud come at different prices.
Then, there are Oud blends with varying quantities of Oud mixed with other fragrance oils and finally you have essential oils that imitate Oud and have nothing to do with Oud, except the name.
The fact is that pure Oud does take a bit of getting used to but once you do get used to it, you are hooked for life. An Oudy is an Oudy for life. Well, I can safely say that for myself. Having said that some people can't stand Oud - it is just not their cup of tea.
I started to venture into perfume shops at the malls and old bazaars sampling various grades and types of Oud oils. During one of my visits to an Abdul Samad Qurashi outlet, the shopkeeper introduced me to various grades of Oud oil; starting from SAR 100 (£20 approx.) to SAR 24,000 (£4,660) per tola (12ml). At that I point, I asked the shopkeeper to stop because I knew I would not be buying the ones that he would show me next. I just could not bring myself to spend that kind of money for a small quantity of Oud oil.
Abdul Samad Al Qurashi (ASQ), as some of you may know, are one of the best known perfume brands in the Middle East. They are known for their Oud, Oud blends and even custom fragrances that they blend for the Royals and the Elite.
So I bought my first Oud oil, a 6ml bottle (available through our store) of 25 years aged and smoked Oud which set me back SAR 500 (£100) but it was all worth it as that bottle lasted me a very long time and was my preferred fragrance for special social and work occasions.
But that wasn't what prompted me into starting a perfumes business. The inspiration to start a business would come later - after I left Saudi Arabia to come back to the UK.
A couple of years later, having elevated myself to the status of a "die hard" Oudy, I bought an Oud Blend EDP from the duty free at Jeddah airport. With many people at work wearing Oud day in and day out, I needed to up my Oud game and I needed a quality Oud perfume that was affordable and could be used daily. I took my new Aljefri Oud to work and stored it in my desk drawer for easy access.
As I started using the perfume, I would have colleagues asking which perfume it was and where I got it from. At the time, Aljefri was a rather unknown brand in the Middle East as it had only recently been launched. Only a select distributors and shops stocked the Brand. So I made an open offer to my colleagues that they could pop into my office at will and use the perfume - which many of them did.
I picked up a few bottles of Aljefri perfumes on my way back to London. As my stock depleted, I needed to replace it and that's when the idea of bringing it to the UK as business emerged. I took a flight to France, where Aljefri is manufactured, and got my first stock, which arrived a few days later and the rest is history.
Aljefri perfumes have performed really well over the last couple of years that we have been selling them on Amazon and Ebay and we have a number of repeat customers. With so much encouragement, we just had to keep going on this journey of seeking out quality perfumes and bringing them to our customers. theoudclub.com is a culmination of the our efforts thus far.
So what are you waiting for? Join the Oud Club on this journey as we bring you quality Oud products.