One of the questions I’ve been asked most often since talking about Botanicals & Company is why the very first qualification I’m taking is in aromatherapy.
After all, we’re not planning to sell essential oils.
We’re building a skincare and fragrance company.
Surely cosmetic formulation would make more sense as the starting point.
The answer is that formulation teaches you how to build products. Aromatherapy teaches you how to understand many of the plants those products are built from.
For me, that distinction matters.
This entire project began with a simple promise to myself: before I asked anyone to trust something I had made, I wanted to understand the ingredients properly. Not simply because they are fashionable, or because someone on social media says they work, but because I had taken the time to study them from the ground up.
That is why aromatherapy comes first.
Learning the language of plants
People often think aromatherapy is simply about pleasant smells or relaxing lavender baths.
The reality is rather more interesting.
It is the study of aromatic plants, how they produce their volatile compounds, how those compounds are extracted, how they interact with the body, how they should be diluted safely, and how their chemistry influences both fragrance and function.
If I eventually spend years formulating creams, balms, facial oils and perfumes, I want to understand where those ingredients begin.
Not at the laboratory bench.
In the plant itself.
Loving something is not the same as understanding it
I’ve used essential oils for decades.
I’ve blended my own facial oils, grown aromatic herbs in the garden, experimented with small-scale steam distillation, and accumulated what is probably an unhealthy number of books about medicinal plants.
Like many enthusiastic amateurs, I’ve learnt a great deal through curiosity.
Curiosity, however, is not the same thing as competence.
Growing lavender teaches you something about patience.
Distilling a handful of mint teaches you how astonishingly little essential oil a large quantity of plant material actually produces.
Blending oils at the kitchen table teaches you confidence.
Professional study teaches you where that confidence should stop.
That difference matters enormously when the goal is eventually to create products other people will trust enough to put on their skin.
Understanding before creating
I sometimes think learning cosmetic formulation before understanding botanical ingredients would be rather like training as a chef before learning about vegetables.
You might eventually produce something that tastes wonderful.
But understanding why ingredients behave as they do is what separates following recipes from creating them.
Plants are no different.
Every essential oil carries hundreds of naturally occurring compounds.
Those compounds influence fragrance, stability, safety and performance.
Some are wonderfully gentle.
Some become irritating above surprisingly low concentrations.
Some oxidise quickly.
Some interact with medication.
Some should never be used during pregnancy.
Understanding those details is not simply academic.
It is part of the responsibility that comes with creating products for other people.
Skincare is only part of the journey
Botanicals & Company has always been about more than skincare.
Fragrance has fascinated me for almost as long.
A beautiful perfume begins with exactly the same questions.
Why does one flower smell different at dawn than it does at dusk?
Why does one oil disappear within minutes while another lingers for hours?
Why do some aromas immediately evoke memory while others create a feeling that is almost impossible to describe?
Aromatherapy doesn’t answer every one of those questions.
But it provides the vocabulary needed to begin asking them properly.
Respecting the plants themselves
One unexpected lesson from experimenting with my own distillation was simply how much plant material is required to produce such a tiny amount of oil.
A bottle of rose essential oil represents thousands of petals.
Sandalwood requires decades of growth.
Frankincense depends upon trees that have been harvested carefully over generations.
It becomes impossible to think of these simply as ingredients.
They become living systems, ecosystems and communities of growers whose knowledge stretches back centuries.
Understanding that changes how I think about formulation.
It also changes how I think about responsibility.
Building credibility slowly
There would have been nothing stopping me launching Botanicals & Company tomorrow.
I could have bought ingredients, found a manufacturer, designed attractive packaging and written convincing marketing copy.
Many brands do exactly that.
It simply isn’t the way I want to build this one.
I want every formulation to sit on a foundation of learning.
Every recommendation to come from understanding rather than repetition.
Every claim to be supported by knowledge I have earned rather than borrowed.
That takes longer.
I suspect it also builds something more valuable.
The wider journey
Aromatherapy is only the first step.
Cosmetic formulation will follow.
Western herbalism will almost certainly follow that.
Perhaps Ayurveda afterwards.
Each discipline answers a different question.
Together they begin to build the kind of understanding I want behind Botanicals & Company.
Not because customers will ever ask what qualifications sit behind a face oil.
Most never will.
But because I’ll know.
And that matters to me.
Looking ahead
I don’t expect to finish this course and suddenly understand everything there is to know about aromatic plants.
If anything, I expect the opposite.
I suspect it will reveal just how much there is still to learn.
That, to me, is the mark of good education.
Before I formulate creams.
Before I blend perfumes.
Before the first Botanicals & Company product finds its way onto someone’s bathroom shelf.
I want to understand the plants.
Everything else can come afterwards.
A note on following along
This article is part of the public journal documenting the creation of Botanicals & Company between now and its planned launch in 2030.
Along the way I’ll be writing about aromatherapy, cosmetic formulation, herbalism, ingredients, fragrances, the mistakes I make, the books I read, and occasionally the moments where everything seems far more complicated than I expected.
One article a week.
No shortcuts.
Just the slow process of learning how to build a botanical skincare and fragrance company properly.