China’s fragrance industry searches for its own scent

At Notes Shanghai’s April edition, the dominant conversation was not about bottle design or brand positioning. It was about what goes inside — specifically, whether China's own aromatic ingredients can drive the next chapter of the country’s fast-maturing fragrance industry. “China is the cradle of raw materials, a treasure trove of ingredients waiting to be developed,” says Philip Montague-Peters, a master perfumer at Ningbo-based Fechii Flavors and Fragrances. The company is mapping China’s specialty fragrance ingredients and establishing a gene bank — work that places it at the center of a broader industry shift. “This is nothing short of a perfume ingredients revolution,” he says, arguing that China is positioned not only to supply raw materials globally but to challenge the traditional hierarchies of fine perfumery. China’s fragrance fair grows up Founded in 2024, Notes Shanghai has rapidly become a bellwether for the domestic scent industry. Its April 2026 edition drew around 200 brands — with some 60 percent being international exhibitors, according to the organizers — reflecting both the market’s openness and its growing global pull. For years, China’s fragrance sector relied heavily on imported high-performance and specialty ingredients sourced from Western suppliers — a dependency that reflected both technological gaps and the dominance of established global supply chains. That is changing, as domestic brands respond to consumer demand for scents that feel culturally rooted and distinctly Chinese. Domestic players are moving beyond familiar notes such as tea, osmanthus, chrysanthemum, and jasmine, identifying and commercializing native botanicals that can set them apart in an increasingly crowded market — and building out a far broader, more experimental aromatic range in the process. Companies including Fechii, Tianjin Double Horse Flavors and Fragrances (DHFF), and Guangdong-based Wincom Flavors and Fragrances are among those driving this research push, working to identify ingredients with the potential not only to resonate domestically but to earn a place in the global perfumery repertoire. ‘Chenpi’ and the rise of aged scent culture Chenpi — dried, aged tangerine peel — is perhaps the most striking example of this shift. With more than 700 years of processing history and national geographical indication protection, the ingredient is synonymous with Xinhui in Guangdong province, where it has long been prized in both traditional medicine and Cantonese cooking. Unlike many Western fragrance ingredients, which prize freshness and immediacy, chenpi derives its value from time. Official standards require a minimum of three years of aging before a peel can be classified as chenpi at all — and premium specimens are routinely aged for a decade or longer, developing layered aromatic profiles of corresponding complexity. “The West values freshness; China reveres age,” says Xu Qing, Technical Director and Master Perfumer at Fechii, adding that high-quality chenpi delivers a layered scent profile of woody depth and medicinal bitterness — with a longevity that, at the premium end, she said can extend up to 40 hours. That emphasis on aging reflects a distinctly Chinese olfactory philosophy — one rooted in cultural traditions of patience, craftsmanship, and the idea that value is something accrued over time, not manufactured instantly. Expanding the olfactory vocabulary Chenpi is the most prominent example, but the search for native ingredients extends further. Perfumers and researchers are also exploring rhododendron extracts — including species found in Guangxi — alongside moss varieties and camellia notes, each bringing distinct aromatic properties to the palette. Yet ingredient discovery, industry figures argue, is only the beginning. “Chinese perfumers are discovering and reinterpreting national aromatic ingredients, but this alone is not enough,” says Liu Haiqing, Director of Technology Center at Wincom, who noted that without a clearly articulated cultural framework, such creations risk feeling interchangeable in a global market already saturated with new launches. Regulatory complexity adds another layer of difficulty. Integrating Chinese specialty ingredients into global supply chains requires compliance with stringent international standards on safety, traceability, and consistency — demands that require significant, sustained investment from companies still in the early stages of this work. The limits of ingredient-led differentiation With competition intensifying, many brands are turning to hyper-localization — using geographic indication protections and regional specificity to establish authenticity and command premium prices. Xinhui chenpi is the clearest example: its protected origin status confers both symbolic and commercial value that producers elsewhere cannot replicate. Similar logic is being applied to specific camellia varieties — including Snow Pagoda and Xiangfei from Zhejiang’s Jinhua region — where regional specificity is being used to justify premium positioning. However, this ingredient-centric approach carries inherent risks, particularly as more brands adopt similar strategies. “Chinese aromatic ingredients have been in the spotlight for some time, but without cultural framing, there is a risk of aesthetic fatigue,” says Ally Santos, a fragrance journalist and influencer. Ingredients, she argues, need a story behind them — one rooted in how and why people actually use a scent — or they risk disappearing into an already crowded field. Fragrance as lifestyle infrastructure Alongside this ingredient-led evolution, consumption patterns are shifting significantly. Fragrance is no longer confined to fine perfume — it is spreading into beauty, home, and personal care, reshaping how Chinese consumers interact with scent across daily life. According to iiMedia Research, China’s perfume market reached RMB 20.7 billion ($2.9 billion) in 2023 and is projected to reach RMB 51.5 billion ($7.1 billion) by 2029 — with growth in adjacent categories expected to outpace the core perfume segment. “Fragrance has become a key differentiator for lifestyle brands in China,” says Jackie Lin, Marketing Manager for Fine Fragrance China at DSM-Firmenich. Brands across beauty, personal care, and home are integrating scent not as an add-on but as a core part of how they connect with consumers emotionally. The shift is more than commercial. Scent is moving from something worn to something lived in — a way of defining a space, setting a mood, and anchoring the rhythms of daily life. Retail as ritual and experience That shift is reshaping retail. Hangzhou-based Arome Manpo has built its Shanghai store as a sequenced sensory experience — moving visitors through cleansing, scent exploration, and tea appreciation — while expanding into candles, incense, and scented objects alongside its core perfume range. Tea brand Chali has moved into scented accessories, and Yinxi Tea House has launched candles and incense as extensions of its quiet luxury positioning. Across all three, the logic is the same: fragrance as a way to carry an in-store feeling into daily life. From ingredients to narrative power The brands already pulling ahead in China’s fragrance market understand something the ingredient-focused players are still learning: raw materials open the door, but narrative is what keeps consumers inside. Leading domestic brands such as To Summer, Documents, and Melt Season are already operating on different terrain — building identities rooted in atmosphere, memory, and cultural reinterpretation rather than the provenance of their ingredients. It is a growing industry recognition: raw materials can attract attention, but narrative is what sustains it — particularly in the luxury segment, where meaning carries as much weight as composition. New players redefine China’s fragrance ambition FIFTYSIX, making its debut at Notes Shanghai, represents perhaps the boldest articulation of this approach. Named after China’s 56 ethnic groups, the brand draws on folklore, tribal legacies, and oral traditions as the foundation for its fragrance identity. Its debut collection of eight fragrances — including “Wild Heart” and “Soma’s Tear” — explores themes of love, ritual, and mythology, rendering cultural references through a distinctly contemporary lens. Rather than leading with ingredient provenance, FIFTYSIX builds its identity through language: scents are framed as “potions,” perfumers as “alchemists,” and formulations as “ancient recipes” — a world-building approach that sets it apart from the botanical-led positioning dominant among domestic peers. A different playbook for luxury Behind the brand is a complementary partnership. Nils Andersson brings over two decades of advertising experience in China; his brother Paul Andersson contributes more than 30 years in perfumery at DSM-Firmenich. “I’m a storyteller, my brother is a perfumer,” Nils Andersson says. “Together we are potion makers.” The brand is explicit about what it is not. “We are story-based, edgy, and not ingredient-led,” he says — a pointed observation about the risk of domestic brands converging around a similar “zen” aesthetic. Cultural capital becomes the battleground The divergence between FIFTYSIX and its ingredient-led peers points to where China’s fragrance industry is heading: away from botanical discovery and toward the harder, more lucrative work of cultural translation. If the first phase of growth was defined by local raw materials, the next will depend on how effectively brands can convert China’s cultural depth into narratives that travel — ones that mean something beyond the country’s borders as well as within them. For now, the field is wide open. “It is such a young industry here — no one can truly claim it yet,” Andersson says. That openness is precisely the opportunity — for the brands bold enough to define what Chinese fragrance means before someone else does.

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China’s fragrance industry searches for its own scent

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag