Kam Kyoryo

Kam Kyoryo stepped onto the scene as an investigative piece, an undercover oud on a reconnaissance mission to get feedback and gauge the oud market. To see if anyone noticed…

There’s little satisfaction in selling exceptional fragrances when they end up with people who don’t fully appreciate them. It’s so much more rewarding when they do – when someone knows that something is exceptional and understands why it’s so; loves that they own it, gratefully digging into it. That’s why artistry and appreciation tend to go hand-in-hand. Art begs to be shared.

While I knew some would think that it’s some kind of stunt, we were upfront about the fact that Kam Kyoryo was way underpriced, yet I was unsure what you’d make of that detail. Was it just marketing, or what? (We really did take a hit selling it.)

So, I saw the release as a blind test of sorts, and was surprised – happily surprised – to discover how many people remarked on how Kam Kyoryo is ‘exceptional for the price’. 

Not just that, Kam Kyoryo also quickly became the best selling oud. Some didn’t explicitly tell us that they thought it was a bargain – but after trying it, they did come back to buy multiple bottles…

So, while every bottle that sold was a loss for us, it again confirmed that EO connoisseurs unknowingly did know. You ‘got it’… without realizing it.

Kam Kyoryo, the oud, contains fantastic agarwood and could have sold for five times what it did sell for and nobody would bat an eye. The fact that so many who smelled it thought it should sell for more just proves that connoisseurs, knowingly or unknowingly, picked up on the objective superiority of the wood that went into distilling the oud.

I’m telling you all of this because it’s the same thing with this Pure Parfum rendition. As a smell, it could easily sell for more. Objectively, given the amount of artisanal oud in here, it should sell for more.

I guess this is where the PR angle comes in…

If you own a bottle of Kam Kyroyo (or didn’t understand why you just had to buy a backup bottle or three), you can now approach it knowing that it punches in a higher weight class. That you got proper wild, quality agarwood oil practically on the house. But more than that, buy a bottle of its perfume rendition and take the Kam Kyoryo experience even further to smell yet again that when we say EO = OUD perfume, we mean it!

The oud imbues the perfume with a agar-infused syrup-like saturnine flavor – think a cone of Cambodian oud incense burning down into a paste of fruit molasses, with an echo of that beautifully discreet mintiness – not exactly in a mentholic sense, but rather mint’s ‘piercing’ quality which in oud terms often hints at quality (hence its rarity).

The scent opens with wafts of that ozonic petrichor blue-green tone before notes of osmanthus and mimosa laced with blue water lilies come together and fuse with the oud resin.

This perfume is also a slight departure from your typical EO perfume in the way it unfolds. Once the scent settles on your skin (or scarf) you’ll notice the consistency of that opening play, which is a feature of the pure oud as well. 

In that sense, Kam Kyoryo is less a perfume to delve into and study and more one to just wear and enjoy. Some perfumes take you on a journey – you wear them exactly to experience the unfolding; the phases; the notepicking. Kam Kyoryo is a steady breeze. Its ozonic floral resin syrup incense profile keeps going until you’re two hours and still smell like you had just taken a spritz.

NOTES:
Kam Kyoryo (Oud)
Raw Agarwood Resin
Grey Ambergris
Hyraceum
Caraway
Artemisia
Blue Lotus
Blue Cypress
Juniper Berries
Kazanlak Rose
Osmanthus
Mimosa

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