Fragrance an integral part of Middle East

Marshoud Al-Marshoud, a perfume developer in the Kuwait City-based fragrance company Atyab Al-Marshoud, on April 19 / Korea Times photo by Kang Hyun-kyung

Use of perfumes in the region has cultural roots

By Kang Hyun-kyung

KUWAIT CITY— Scents invoke certain memories and some people use fragrances because they want to present themselves through them.

In the Middle East, however, wearing a fragrance is considered a polite gesture and those who anoint themselves with perfumes are considered religiously committed. For these reasons, fragrance has been an integral part of the Middle Eastern way of life for centuries.

Their extensive use of fragrances is evident in the traditional market Souq Mubarekia in the Kuwaiti capital, where perfumes, along with food and clothing, are the most traded items.

In Kuwait, unlike in Europe, fragrances have a short lifecycle, that is, no one perfume dominates the market for more than a year.

“In Europe, if certain perfume brands become popular, they stay in vogue for at least five years,” said Marshoud Al-Marshoud, a perfume developer in the Kuwait City-based fragrance company Atyab Al-Marshoud. “But in Kuwait, consumers’ preferences are changing much faster than those of Europeans,” he said in an April 19 interview at the company store in the Avenue Mall in Kuwait City.

Bhakoor, scented wood chips from thousand-year-old trees, is a key ingredient of perfume and incense. / Korea Times

He said the herding phenomenon is behind the fast-changing preferences of Kuwaiti consumers.

“If certain products become popular, it’s because Kuwaiti consumers are crazy about them. But they can also suddenly switch their attentions to another product,” he said. “It’s easier to produce perfumes appealing to consumers here, but it’s challenging to entice them to stay with the same product for years.”

Al-Marshoud is the grandson of the late Sulaiman Al-Marshoud, who founded Atyab Al-Marshoud, a family business and the first fragrance company established in the Gulf region in 1925. The elder Al-Marshoud traveled extensively to India and Southeast Asia to search for “bhakoor,” scented wood chips from thousand-year-old trees and a key ingredient of fragrance and incense. Middle Easterners burn bhakoor in incense burners to perfume their homes and clothing. The elder Al-Marshoud sold bhakoor and pure oils extracted from plants and flowers to consumers, and taught his son how to blend oils to make fragrances.

Authentic perfumes are made from 80 percent alcohol and 20 percent plant oils. Some established perfume houses use chemicals instead of pure oils, and Al-Marshoud said the resulting products are not real perfumes and their scents evaporate quickly.

In the traditional market Souq Mubarekia in the Kuwaiti capital, perfumes, along with food and clothing, are the most traded items. / Korea Times

He says pure oils and effective oil blending are the two key elements of the quality and scent of perfumes, noting that his company uses only pure oils to produce real perfumes that have long-lasting scent.

After the death of his grandfather, his father, with the help of his uncles, continued the family business. The oldest and largest homegrown perfume maker in Kuwait has 15 stores at home and two branches in Dubai and Qatar.

Kuwaitis are loyal to the homegrown perfumes. “Over 80 percent of Kuwaitis use homegrown perfumes. They are loyal consumers,” Al-Marshoud said. “Smelling good is considered a virtue here in Kuwait, and for some reason people opt for homegrown brands maybe because they feel that wearing them is appropriate when they pray or go to mosque.”

Al-Marshoud said the high perfume consumption in Kuwait helped his father’s business thrive. “It’s good that Kuwaitis love fragrances. There are no Kuwaitis who hate perfumes — they consume perfumes a lot,” he said.

Middle Easterners are heavy users of perfumes. According to the 2014 Euromonitor report, fragrances account for nearly 20 percent of the Middle East and North Africa’s beauty market, where annual retail sales reach $5 billion. Another report by market research company Chalhoub Group found that fragrances and cosmetics are two of the fastest-growing markets in the Middle East, consumption of which increases by 12 percent annually, one of the highest in the world.

Fragrances are much more than fresheners in the Middle East. Kuwaiti historian Farhan Abdullah Ahmed Al-Farhan at the Kuwait National Library said Middle Easterners have used perfumes and burnt incense since the beginning of history.

“People here burn scented woods to kill germs and bacteria at home. Old Middle Easterners bought certain flowers from Mediterranean countries, extracted the oils from them and used those oils as fragrances,” he said.

Besides being used for disinfecting purposes, Al-Farhan said fragrances have religious importance in the Middle East. “Since the time of the Prophet Mohammed, people in the region have used perfumes extensively. They sprinkle perfumes on themselves before they go to the mosque to pray,” he said. “Grooms and brides wear perfumes during their wedding ceremonies. People buy perfumes as gifts for their guests as a gesture of hospitality.”

Omar Al-Sanea, an official from Kuwait’s Ministry of Information, said he is a typical Kuwaiti who loves perfumes. He said he always has five to seven different types of perfumes, mostly European brands, and uses one of them for an entire week.

“When I was a child, I was taught by my parents to use perfumes daily because a good scent is considered a gesture of politeness in our culture,” he said. “You are supposed to have a good, clean scent all the time. In Islamic culture, we believe cleanliness is very important, and that’s why we always wash our hands before we pray.”

He said his favorite brand is Davidoff’s Leather Blend. “It has a distinct smell. It has strong European notes, which people smell immediately after application. But these notes fade as time goes by, leaving the base note, which is very much Middle Eastern and long lasting.”

Over the centuries, Middle Easterners came to develop their own way of blending and applying perfumes. Al-Sanea said he blends his perfumes with oil for a long-lasting scent. “The smell is still there even after I wash my hands several times,” he said.

Coffee beans are also widely used in perfume stores in Kuwait to help consumers reset or cleanse their sense of smell. After being exposed to several different types of scents, people tend to suffer from olfactory fatigue and are unable to distinguish one odor from another. Perfume sellers recommend that their customers smell the coffee beans to alleviate olfactory fatigue which will enable them to sample other perfumes.

Al-Marshoud said European fragrances are light, whereas Middle Eastern fragrances are heavy because of the ingredients. “What we are seeing now is that the global brands are shifting to Middle Eastern ingredients,” he said.

He encouraged consumers to take a close look at the ingredients. “I know some young people consider brands rather than ingredients. Some fragrances don’t use pure oils. They are not perfumes,” he said.

Due to the popularity of perfumes in Kuwait, consumers enjoy a wide selection of products from both homegrown and imported brands. Najeeb, a seller of homegrown fragrances in Souq Mubarekia, said his store sells over 100 different perfumes. He said homegrown perfumes are popular among Kuwaitis because of their Middle Eastern scents and reasonable prices. The average price of homegrown perfume is lower than those imported mostly from Europe. One of Najeeb’s best sellers, for example, costs only 5 Kuwaiti dinar (less than $20) per 50 ml.