All Things Ensar Oud

[naylor]

They have more demand than supply, small businesses have the option and luxury to cut off those ill-intension fake customers. Have you seen some people would purposely go to a restaurant to order the expensive stuff, eat half or 2/3 of it, and then call the waiter and said something was wrong with the dish? and demand for a refund or taken off of the bill? they make a big scene when the waiter or manager wouldn't provide refund because most of the dish had already been consumed? well....in a situation like that, what would you have done if you were the restaurant owner? do you cut the loss and ban those terrible customers forever, or do you simply bend over and write it off as a loss, but risk the same terrible people keep coming back to pull the same shenanigans and same type of scam over and over again? when words come out that they could take advantage of your restaurant, before you know it, their cousins, their cousin's brother, and their cousin's brother's cat and their cat's fleas all wanted a piece of the free pie!

Sometime, you just have to cut the loss, certain crappy customers are not worth having, period, way more trouble than it's worth, I hate to say this as i'm sure many would disagree..... but the loss of one or few customers is far better than having to deal with those type of garbage fake customers. they aren't real customers to begin with, they were there to take advantage, hoping to get a free meal, while some others simply enjoy watching the world burn, and they shit on your business simply because they can, even they do come to order a few takeouts from time to time.

Ironically, I'm actually in the restaurant business. It's what I've done my entire life. What you describe above is simply not the best way to deal with customers, as difficult as it may be sometimes. It's a hard lesson that took me years to learn myself.

 

[naylor]

For real? why? lol Qi Nan is a reconstruction of Kinam Oud, a combination of different ouds but no real Kinam in it. While Purple Rain has real Purple Kinam in it.

Do you like the scent profile of Qi Nan better? Performance? or the complexity of it?

LOL, "tenfold" was a bit of an exaggeration. I just think that Qi Nan is a much better perfume personally, and I'm not much of an Iris Ghalia fan. Qi Nam is just extremely well done, and I enjoy the profile and evolution better.

Why do you say there's not real kinam in it, btw? There's literal pieces of kyara (kinam) in the bottle ... unless I'm missing something? I also own Purple Kinam parfum, as well as the straight Purple Kiam oud oil, so I'm familiar with those profiles. I just prefer it not to be mixed with the Iris Ghalia base.

 

[Mak-7]

So if you take purple kinam perfume and strip off the kinam oil thqt is what latest iteration of iris ghaliya is?

 

[Xcaliber6685]

Ironically, I'm actually in the restaurant business. It's what I've done my entire life. What you describe above is simply not the best way to deal with customers, as difficult as it may be sometimes. It's a hard lesson that took me years to learn myself.

I didn't own a restaurant business, but have friends that do, and have seen that same scenerio many times throughout the years, the owner didn't agree with my approach either even when I tried many times to convince them to just cut the loss man. lol and they do what most businesses do, bend over. The reason? they were afraid to offend the wrong type of people, and afraid that those customers would go spread some false rumors and other crazy stuff, legit reason to bend over, but Ensar Oud can afford to stand their ground a lot firmer, and they can afford to play hardball.

 

[naylor]

So if you take purple kinam perfume and strip off the kinam oil thqt is what latest iteration of iris ghaliya is?

No, he was talking about Purple Rain ... which is a semi-bespoke of Iris Ghalia with Purple Kinam oil added. Purple Kinam parfum is it's own thing, also with Purple Kinam oil added.

It's a bit confusing with all the "purples."

 

[Xcaliber6685]

LOL, "tenfold" was a bit of an exaggeration. I just think that Qi Nan is a much better perfume personally, and I'm not much of an Iris Ghalia fan. Qi Nam is just extremely well done, and I enjoy the profile and evolution better.

Why do you say there's not real kinam in it, btw? There's literal pieces of kyara (kinam) in the bottle ... unless I'm missing something? I also own Purple Kinam parfum, as well as the straight Purple Kiam oud oil, so I'm familiar with those profiles. I just prefer it not to be mixed with the Iris Ghalia base.

Correction, i meant no kinam oil in it that i'm aware of, you are right that there's a piece of Kinam skin in the Qi Nan bottle for marceration. Man, I'm a huge fan of iris Ghalia.....lol Can you describe what you smell from the Qi Nan? scent profile wise, like what does it remind you of? what spices and florals did you get? gourmand? how's the performance?

 

[Xcaliber6685]

So if you take purple kinam perfume and strip off the kinam oil thqt is what latest iteration of iris ghaliya is?

Purple Kinam PP is a completely different composition, I have a sample of it, Purple Kinam has a lot of floral notes. Have never try Purple Rain, which is based off of Iris Ghalia, a semi-bespoke as Naylor mentioned. I'm a huge fan of Iris Ghalia, that stuff is fire, but have never smell any Purple Kinam oil neat.

 

[naylor]

Correction, i meant no kinam oil in it that i'm aware of, you are right that there's a piece of Kinam skin in the Qi Nan bottle for marceration. Man, I'm a huge fan of iris Ghalia.....lol Can you describe what you smell from the Qi Nan? scent profile wise, like what does it remind you of? what spices and florals did you get? gourmand? how's the performance?

Yeah, Iris Ghalia is actually one of my least favorite Ensar creations. I know it gets at lot of love, but it just doesn't do much for my tastes. For what it's worth, I feel like I've got pretty opposite tastes as you, based on much of what you post here.

I honestly don't often review perfumes -- I mostly wear them just for myself, and I also have little interest in talking about performance. But my initial impressions of Qi Nam were pretty powerful. I get a cool, minty blast in the opening ... fresh, mentholated green with almost a wintergreen quality. Clean oud and emerald cypress to form a woody backbone. Overall, what I expect from a quintessential kyara profile. No florals or gourmand aspects to speak of. It's the kind of green profile that I really enjoy, and it left an impression on me.

 

[Xcaliber6685]

Yeah, Iris Ghalia is actually one of my least favorite Ensar creations. I know it gets at lot of love, but it just doesn't do much for my tastes. For what it's worth, I feel like I've got pretty opposite tastes as you, based on much of what you post here.

I honestly don't often like reviewing perfumes -- I mostly wear them just for myself, and I also have little interest in talking about performance. But my initial impressions of Qi Nam were pretty powerful. I get a cool, minty blast in the opening ... fresh, mentholated green with almost a wintergreen quality. Clean oud and emerald cypress to form a woody backbone. Overall, what I expect from a quintessential kyara profile. No florals or gourmand aspects to speak of. It's the kind of green profile that I really enjoy, and it left an impression on me.

Man, that sounds like an awesome composition, thanks for sharing!! There isn't any camphor type quality to it like the Agar Aura stuff right? i love methol and minty type Oud, but camphor on the other hand can be overpowering or a bit too much and medicinal.

 

[naylor]

Man, that sounds like an awesome composition, thanks for sharing!! There isn't any camphor type quality to it like the Agar Aura stuff right? i love methol and minty type Oud, but camphor on the other hand can be overpowering or a bit too much and medicinal.

Well, here's the thing ... every AA that you've mentioned smelling camphor in, I don't smell camphor. So either we have different perceptions of what camphor smells like, or else I love it and you hate it. This one does have a minty, somewhat mentholated quality to the opening, but I personally would not describe it as camphorous -- just in a similar territory. I'd recommend sampling for sure before considering a blind-buy, just as a requisite disclaimer.

For what it's worth, I've seen some people refer to smoky, green scents as being camphorous. If that's your impression, this one is not smoky at all. Many AA scents do have that smoky quality to them.

 

[besimistic]

Ensar Oud knows exactly who you are. They have a database of basenotes aliases that are linked to your name, email, and address. If you've ever ordered directly from Ensar, chances are, they know exactly who you are on basenotes.

Ensar's team scours basenotes and takes post clippings to post on their website as reviews. There, on their reviews page, they will post your BN review and replace your basenotes alias with your first name, last initial as a signature for that review.

So yes - they know who I am. They know who Xcal is, they know who CastingShadows is and if you've ordered from them before Mak, they know who you are too.

Hi,
Sorry in advance if this derails things. I just wanted clarify a few things that were assumed in this post that aren't true (although I can understand why it was assumed to be the case). I can say up front that there isn't such a thing. I think in the earlier years when the team was small and orders were less the team just happened to know all their customers and knew just from personally fulfilling all orders who you all were. But as the company has grown those who update testimonials (I've been updating most reviews on the site lately) are separated from fulfillment so I don't know who any of you are (other than the few I met at the NYC Oudfest) nor what you ordered.

Even in the past few years they had restricted use of names to only first names (not even last initials) for exactly the point of protecting identities. I can understand if that made you uncomfortable to see your username replaced with your first name.

For any testimonials we have been adding for at least the past several months we have been posting only publicly-listed usernames (not real names). You can see this as an example where we added several reviews from IG, using their username, except in the case of the first review where "mightysandalwood” actually posts his name publicly on his IG profile:

https://www.ensaroud.com/product/sultan-red-rose/

Rest assured, we don't track such things. I personally don't know your name or the other two that you named. Perhaps Ensar and the early team does from experience but we don't and I don't think it's my business to try to seek it out.

If you think this trust was violated on any page please let me know and I'll resolve it.

 

[SOB111]

Okay, so ... I very, very much do not want to add to any drama here or antagonize further arguments within the thread. But this is excellent feedback. And I've got to admit that I am no longer comfortable posting my honest opinions and feedback about the EO brand. Certainly not in the FB group, but here now as well. It really isn't fostering a healthy community, and I fully agree that talk of lawyers and EO employees publicly venting should not be happening on this forum. The brand as SO MUCH great stuff going for it right now, more than ever ... the only thing that can truly hurt the brand at this point is the brand itself IMO.

+1 100% to both Naylor and fragsydnrome

 

[Xcaliber6685]

Hi,
Sorry in advance if this derails things. I just wanted clarify a few things that were assumed in this post that aren't true (although I can understand why it was assumed to be the case). I can say up front that there isn't such a thing. I think in the earlier years when the team was small and orders were less the team just happened to know all their customers and knew just from personally fulfilling all orders who you all were. But as the company has grown those who update testimonials (I've been updating most reviews on the site lately) are separated from fulfillment so I don't know who any of you are (other than the few I met at the NYC Oudfest) nor what you ordered.

Even in the past few years they had restricted use of names to only first names (not even last initials) for exactly the point of protecting identities. I can understand if that made you uncomfortable to see your username replaced with your first name.

For any testimonials we have been adding for at least the past several months we have been posting only publicly-listed usernames (not real names). You can see this as an example where we added several reviews from IG, using their username, except in the case of the first review where "mightysandalwood” actually posts his name publicly on his IG profile:

https://www.ensaroud.com/product/sultan-red-rose/

Rest assured, we don't track such things. I personally don't know your name or the other two that you named. Perhaps Ensar and the early team does from experience but we don't and I don't think it's my business to try to seek it out.

If you think this trust was violated on any page please let me know and I'll resolve it.

Personally I don't see any issue with showing who wrote those reviews, that way the reviews are verifiable and are authentic.

if you show those reviews as anonymous.....if I was a betting man then I would bet a house on it, that someone is going to come out of the woodwork, to falsely accuse Ensar Oud of fabricating fake reviews by none existing individual. LOL As a matter of fact, a year or two ago i think someone did make a similar false accusation. I know that was nonsense, because i recognized some names on some of those reviews, including some of mine taken from email communications, they were real feedbacks from real owners.

Speaking of reviews though, I would suggest to section them off even if you were to put them on the same page, for instance, old reviews for the original Crime & Punishment showing up on new Crime & Punishment for sale page is going to look out of place and weird, since they are two completely different compositions, smell differently, therefore the old feedback should not, can not, and will not represent the new variation. Maybe add some notation to the old reviews to take note that they were from previous releases, or color code the text differently, so they can be differentiated? or perhaps add a timestamp or date of the reviews being written?

 

[naylor]

Hi,
Sorry in advance if this derails things. I just wanted clarify a few things that were assumed in this post that aren't true (although I can understand why it was assumed to be the case). I can say up front that there isn't such a thing. I think in the earlier years when the team was small and orders were less the team just happened to know all their customers and knew just from personally fulfilling all orders who you all were. But as the company has grown those who update testimonials (I've been updating most reviews on the site lately) are separated from fulfillment so I don't know who any of you are (other than the few I met at the NYC Oudfest) nor what you ordered.

Even in the past few years they had restricted use of names to only first names (not even last initials) for exactly the point of protecting identities. I can understand if that made you uncomfortable to see your username replaced with your first name.

For any testimonials we have been adding for at least the past several months we have been posting only publicly-listed usernames (not real names). You can see this as an example where we added several reviews from IG, using their username, except in the case of the first review where "mightysandalwood” actually posts his name publicly on his IG profile:

https://www.ensaroud.com/product/sultan-red-rose/

Rest assured, we don't track such things. I personally don't know your name or the other two that you named. Perhaps Ensar and the early team does from experience but we don't and I don't think it's my business to try to seek it out.

If you think this trust was violated on any page please let me know and I'll resolve it.

Since this subject was also broached, let me be the first to say that I do not give Ensar Oud permission to use any of my reviews or public opinions on their website for marketing purposes. Perhaps you don't need my permission, considering this is a public forum, and I'll leave that for your legal team to decide ... but this is legitimately another reason why I'd prefer not to share my personal opinions of your parfums publicly.

I know there's been a lot of back-and-forth tonight about sharing honest feedback. So I'm opening up and starting to share some of my honest feedback about the brand. Some of this has been held back for quite a while, so my apologies in advance.

 

[besimistic]

Personally I don't see any issue with showing who wrote those reviews, that way the reviews are verifiable and are authentic.

if you show those reviews as anonymous.....if I was a betting man then I would bet a house on it, that someone is going to come out of the woodwork, to falsely accuse Ensar Oud of fabricating fake reviews by none existing individual. LOL As a matter of fact, a year or two ago i think someone did make a similar false accusation. I know that was nonsense, because i recognized some names on some of those reviews, including some of mine taken from email communications, they were real feedbacks from real owners.

Speaking of reviews though, I would suggest to section them off even if you were to put them on the same page, for instance, old reviews for the original Crime & Punishment showing up on new Crime & Punishment for sale page is going to look out of place and weird, since they are two completely different compositions, smell differently, therefore the old feedback should not, can not, and will not represent the new variation. Maybe add some notation to the old reviews to take note that they were from previous releases, or color code the text differently, so they can be differentiated? or perhaps add a timestamp or date of the reviews being written?

Agreed about separating reviews of new batches from previous batches. That was another valid critique I found here that we are working to improve upon.

I have already updated a few products on the website to separate old reviews from the new releases but haven't been able to do so with the past few releases due to OudFest work, but the goal is to clean all these up with each new iteration. We also added a “batch” date on the new paper labels like Musc Gardenia to help with this as well.

Because the nature of our perfumery makes it impossible to make the same perfume twice even when we use the EXACT same recipe, only years later. It makes it impossible to scale like mainstream fragrances, but it does add to the charm of artisanal perfumes to know that they won't ever be perfectly replicated.

 

[besimistic]

Since this subject was also broached, let me be the first to say that I do not give Ensar Oud permission to use any of my reviews or public opinions on their website for marketing purposes. Perhaps you don't need my permission, considering this is a public forum, and I'll leave that for your legal team to decide ... but this is legitimately another reason why I'd prefer not to share my personal opinions of your parfums publicly.

I know there's been a lot of back-and-forth tonight about sharing honest feedback. So I'm opening up and starting to share some of my honest feedback about the brand. Some of this has been held back for quite a while, so my apologies in advance.

That's fair. If you do see any used just let me know and I'll remove it. I just searched the site but couldn't find any.

 

[Sinkinggrade]

Not quite sure why you’re naming me in all this. Kinda weird. People write pages on here about disliking things without me commenting. So what if I argue with Ben? I like Ben and we always butt heads.

Also if you don’t like me just hit ignore. I rarely post on here except for spurts every now and then anyways.

Thanks for taking the time to write me here and by DM, Castingshadows.

I do not hate you; I don’t even dislike you. Au contraire… And we had, if I am not mistaken, some good conversations in the past, being Dixit & Zak and Tsvga topics among of them.

I just felt that you are (or were) too involved with EO Parfums and Ensar’s defense and it started to become a bit annoying for me and maybe others, as you are reading today; plus, it is also not good for the brand in my opinion. Ensar does not need you all speaking for him. He is smart and reads [and perceives] everything, and he always takes one path or the other after a while. I ‘know’ him since the Oriscent times on Ebay, and I have been a silent voyeur of his poetic descriptions for years, that’s how it started my approach to oud and to the man himself, and I mean: ten years ago or so. I’ve seen his evolution, and there was a time, during the lockdown, when I strongly disliked his behavior, but he simply understood what he was doing and led EO to a new different level since then. He is a wise and moral person most of the time (as we all are) now that he got his own and undisputed place in the artesanal corner —thanks, in part, to Basenotes, since the idea of selling oud for the western market, not by its own, neat, but a little blended and/or under the form of a sprayable format, was said for the first time here— and, as I though and wrote last year, it did finally happen. His transformation, I mean. He now only tries to be Ensar, not Adam anymore.

Once again, my apologies if you felt attacked. You are a knowledgeable person when it comes to oud, I am certainly not at that level of love for this material, and always follow your videos and descriptions —oud by itself is still not enough for me, even if I love a few of them, but I don’t give up and keep trying—. We both also share the passion for Zak’s work since the very beginning and you are even starting to appreciate Antonio’s (Gardoni) art, a friend I do really appreciate and whose public and private workS I do admire like very few others. So let’s reset our relationship.

 

[Tosef]

Getting back on the Oud stuff.

If you guys have the option to own just one of these, either Qi Nan or Purple Rain, which one would you rather have? ;-)

I'd probably go for Qi Nan, as it sounds more intriguing to me. I have never tried Iris G tho but was also never really tempted tho (even tho reviews sound great). I'm not a big iris lover. Nevertheless, would love to try it sometime!

I've made quite a few purchase recently tho with which I'm very happy. Monsieur Oud PP, which is just such an uplifting, juicy, citrus easy to wear scent. Green Papua, damp musty/musky earthy ouddiness. And, very recently 2gr each of Oud Arafa and Borneo 50K which I will gift myself for Christmas.

 

[Sadat]

deleted

 

[RedPillFrag]

Yeah, Iris Ghalia is actually one of my least favorite Ensar creations. I know it gets at lot of love, but it just doesn't do much for my tastes. For what it's worth, I feel like I've got pretty opposite tastes as you, based on much of what you post here.

I honestly don't often review perfumes -- I mostly wear them just for myself, and I also have little interest in talking about performance. But my initial impressions of Qi Nam were pretty powerful. I get a cool, minty blast in the opening ... fresh, mentholated green with almost a wintergreen quality. Clean oud and emerald cypress to form a woody backbone. Overall, what I expect from a quintessential kyara profile. No florals or gourmand aspects to speak of. It's the kind of green profile that I really enjoy, and it left an impression on me.

sounds similar to EO green?