One of the loveliest companies we found at Ambiente was eco-friendly home fragrance specialist BsaB (pronounced Bee-sah-Bee), a Dutch company that manufactures organic candles and diffusers in Thailand.
The name BsaB is derived from the word ‘wabi-sabi’ which means ‘the imperfect nature’ and celebrates the wild beauty of the undisturbed natural world. We spoke to Ate Gerritsen about the inspirational concept.
Explaining how the enterprise was set up, Ate told us: “Nicolas Monseu, moved from Brussel to Thailand 25 years ago and then ten years ago he started making candles together with his wife Deng-on in their living room. The living room soon become too small so they went to live somewhere else, and until recently they were still producing candles in their former living room! Now we have a 100 per cent self-sustainable, co2 neutral production facility just out of Bangkok.”
“BsaB products are handmade from organic materials to ensure the highest quality. So we use soy wax instead of paraffin, essential oils instead of perfume and all our packaging is from recycled materials. At the same time, we feel very responsible for our environment, so we take extra good care of our employees and local suppliers by providing an honest pay and educational possibilities”.
The typical BsaB lifestyle would, he says, “best be described as organic chic. BsaB has very high quality products because of the use of natural ingredients. Our typical consumer uses our products because of the high quality, the fact that our products are organic and produced according to the fairtrade principal is a must for some of our consumers but for most of them the high quality is the most important”.
While Garden Centre Buyer is extremely interested in the provenance of products and environmentally friendly credentials, we wanted to know how concerned Ate thinks consumers are with ethical/organic considerations when buying fragrances and other home products. Is awareness growing?
“I see that consumers are becoming more and more concerned with the origin of the products, also for home fragrances. People do not like to be part of something that is not produced in an ethical way. Eventually it will become the standard worldwide. Everything that BsaB can do to accelerate this process we do gladly by giving the right example”.
In terms of product lines, “our 50ml and 200ml diffusers are always our most popular products” says Ate,” the coconut candle also sold very well at Ambiente. The most popular scents tend to be Tranquility and Lemongrass”.
BsaB is best-known for its unique diffusers, the only diffusers in the world that consist of 100 per cent natural undiluted essential oils. The company also discovered its own brand unique branches, Sida rhombifolia linn, a tropical weed native to Thailand. They look amazing and because of the hollow structure also serve as more effective diffusers than solid varieties.
All BsaB candles consist of 100 per cent pure soy wax and unbleached cotton wicks and the unique scents are obtained by combining natural and pure essential oils extracted form plants, flowers, herbs and other natural ingredients. Only the finest oils are used from around the world to ensure high levels of purity.
Being earth-centred is vital to the BsaB ethos, which uses glass bottles that are discarded as trash in Thailand. Some people collect the bottles and sell them for a few coins. To provide extra income to local glass collectors BsaB have taught them to cut the bottles into stylish shapes that are then used as holders for the recycled glass candles and diffuser vases.
