01 The Origin
Who we are
Hello everyone. If you are here, it means you might have stumbled across Olfactorian on the internet. Welcome and thank you for being a part of Olfactorian!
We are Alex and Sophie, the founding team behind Olfactorian. Alex is a product manager and programmer by day, and a hobbyist perfumer by night. Sophie is a fashion designer and curator based in Vietnam with a degree in computer science. She is also a scent head and the reason why Alex picked up perfumery five years ago.
Travelling back in time 5 years ago, we were two scent enthusiasts who thought that we could create a reed diffuser from a Black Friday's sales of essential oils on Amazon. Before long, our shelves are stacked with over 100 aroma materials. We started with Youtube videos, then Basenotes, then Reddit and Facebook. We were finding our ways in the dark and at the same time, super grateful for all the helps we received along the way. We discovered a world of fun smelling different materials, getting our hands on the precious materials, and got to create a few formulas people shared online before getting good enough to create a few decent ones on our own.
However, the journey, as you suspected, was a rough ride. While the online resources are vast, they are also scattered across forums and social media channels. Some might not even show up on the Google Search unless you know exactly what you are searching for. And when we shared formulas among our little group of friends, it was messy. That was why in 2024, we started building Olfactorian. We wanted to create a digital space where we could share formulas, create scents together, and learn from each other's successes and mistakes. Perfumery is a sensational art, and it would be much more fun doing it together than venturing alone in the dark.
To our surprise, Olfactorian grew without any promotion. Other hobbyists and indie perfumers found it and started using it. Honestly, got too much attention before it was ready. Many formulas weren't screened, the interface was rough, and social features needed work. You could clearly see the scaffold of Olfactorian as it is being built, live, right before your eyes!
Regardless, the need was real. People wanted a place to search decades of fragrance knowledge and experiment together.
So we kept building.
02 Vision
What we're building toward
We envision a place where anyone can search for fragrance knowledge, experiment with formulas, build on each other's work, and get the deserved recognition, maybe even side income from it. We have seen this happened to video creation (Youtube), graphic design (Dribbble), writings (Medium/Substack), and programming (GitHub). Why not perfumery?
That's the problem we're solving.
We're not trying to replace traditional perfumery education or diminish the craft. We're trying to open the door wider.
03 AI Stance
Where we stand on AI
AI in perfumery is a charged topic. So let us be direct. AI is a tool. It can help perfumers work faster — tracking experiments, looking up material data, suggesting substitutions. We use AI to help us take notes and convert them into spreadsheets so we can smell more and type less when we're in creative mode. It should assist the process, not replace it.
No AI training on your formulas.
Your work will not be used to build AI models. Period. Not now, not ever. This is a permanent commitment.
No "AI Perfumer."
We have zero intention — now or ever — of creating an AI that generates formulas on its own. Perfumery is a human art. The nose, the intuition, the creative vision — that’s yours, and no algorithm replaces it.
Honest about AI images.
We use AI-generated images for some placeholder visuals on the platform. Bootstrapped reality! We’re transparent about that.
One thing worth saying plainly: if something is publicly available on the internet, AI can and will scrape it. There's not much anyone can do about that. This is exactly why we built Labspace as a private workspace. Anything you create there stays private, not visible to the public, not scrapable. You always control which is which.
04 Promises
Our promises
These aren't marketing. They're commitments we've made publicly on Discord, on Basenotes, in direct conversations and we intend to be held to them.
No selling data to ads. Ever. Not now, not when we’re bigger. We hate ads. Of course, if a supplier has a new material and would like to sponsor us to announce to the whole community to experiment with, we are more than happy to do so!
Your data is yours. Private formulas stay private. You can export your work anytime. No vendor lock-in. We remove content immediately when requested.
No AI training on your private formulas. Non-negotiable. Permanent.
Creators control their own work. You decide what’s public, what’s private, what’s shared. Don’t want your work on the platform? We take it down. Done.
Transparent about money. We’re currently bootstrapped. We’re paying for servers and development out of pocket. Will it need to be sustainable long-term? Yes. When we explore revenue (optional premium features, supplier partnerships, competition sponsorships), we’ll tell the community first. What is free now will always be free.
Hold us accountable. If we violate any of this, call us out. Publicly. We mean it.
05 Team
The team
Sophie Vuong
Co-Founder & CEO
Background in fashion and brand strategy. Leads business development, partnerships, and the vision for how Olfactorian connects creators to the broader fragrance ecosystem. Started building this together as a long-distance project before it became something much bigger.
Alex Vu
Co-Founder & President
Self-taught perfumer. Product manager and programmer by trade — spent over a decade building data platforms at major financial institutions. Perfumery is the artistic side. Originally from Vietnam, previously New York, now London.
Olfactorian is shaped by the people who use it. Hobbyists, indie brand founders, students, and professionals from dozens of countries contribute formulas, participate in challenges, and push the platform forward every day. Friends who share the open perfumery vision — Based, Harrison Joseph, Quintessential, Sillage, and many others — help make it real.