Why young Chinese are rediscovering the scented sachet

For centuries, the Chinese scented sachet (香囊), occupied a familiar place in folk culture: an embroidered pouch filled with aromatic herbs and spices such as mugwort and cloves, worn on the body or exchanged around traditional celebrations including Dragon Boat Festival. Today, the objects are being pulled out of their seasonal and folkloric context and repositioned for a generation buying fragrance as much for emotional value and cultural identity as for scent. Across Chinese e-commerce platforms, tourist destinations and social media, sachets are appearing as bag charms, bracelets, car accessories and home fragrance products. Some retain traditional embroidery and herbal fillings; others borrow Song brocade, contemporary graphics and fashion-accessory codes. In Yiwu, the eastern Chinese manufacturing and wholesale hub known for its vast small-commodities trade, one retailer sold hundreds of thousands of Song brocade sachets within roughly five days of launch, while manufacturers said they can move from identifying a trend to design, sampling and production in 15 to 20 days. The speed is helping turn what was once a low-frequency festival purchase into a test case for a larger question facing China’s cultural industries: can intangible heritage become a scalable consumer category without reducing tradition to another decorative motif? Young consumers rediscover an old fragrance format The sachet revival is unfolding alongside a much larger reappraisal of Chinese fragrance. Since February 2025, orders for Chinese-style incense on Taobao jumped 280% month-on-month, while sales of related burners and holders increased 480%, according to CCTV. Orders from the generations of consumers born after 1995 and 2000 grew more than 300% year on year, with agarwood, sandalwood and the historically inspired goose pear incense (鹅梨帐中香), which blends sweet pear, sandalwood, and warm spices, among the most popular scents. Fragrance is increasingly being consumed as ritual rather than simply personal grooming. Consumers share incense routines, reviews and DIY scent-making on social platforms, connecting products with sleep, meditation, concentration and emotional relaxation. Traditional cold-compounded incense, made with natural aromatic ingredients and formed into beads, powders or wearable scent pieces, is also finding younger customers. A practitioner interviewed by CCTV said custom fragrance orders had risen two to three times year on year, with people in their 20s becoming a major source of growth. On Xiaohongshu, the enthusiasm frequently extends beyond scent to cultural provenance. User Cangyang in My Heart Added Wrong (@心中的仓央加错) commented that when it comes to an appreciation of beauty and ingenuity, “our ancestors were already far ahead,” while Mingming LMM (@明明LMM), who said she has been making traditional sachets for several years, observed that gradually more people are embracing traditional arts and recognizing their value. Others approach sachets through wellness and sensory experience. Peizhen Pavilion (@佩珍阁) wrote that she previously preferred industrially produced home fragrances until discovering a sachet, saying its scent made her feel calmer and that she subsequently began buying more. Such testimonials help explain why the format can sit simultaneously within fragrance, craft and the broader Chinese market for products associated with emotional wellbeing. The consumer profile also challenges the assumption that heritage crafts primarily appeal to older shoppers. According to Shangpu Consulting's January-to-October 2025 Sachet Category Market Insights report, women accounted for 58% of consumers, while 26-to-35-year-olds were the largest age group at 31%. Consumers in second-tier cities and below collectively represented 58%, suggesting demand is not restricted to China's most affluent metropolitan markets. More importantly, 68% said purchasing decisions were made independently rather than primarily influenced by others. For a category historically associated with gifting and festivals: the contemporary sachet is increasingly being bought for the consumer herself. From festival souvenir to everyday accessory Purchase frequency may pose a challenge to merchants. Thirty-seven percent of surveyed consumers purchased sachets only once or twice annually, while another 24% bought roughly once per quarter, Shangpu data reveals. The dominant spending level was 20 RMB ($3) to 50 RMB ($5.70) per purchase, accounting for 38% of respondents, while 59% considered 10 RMB ($1.50) to 30 RMB ($4.50) an acceptable price. For producers, expanding the category therefore requires creating more reasons to use the product. To Summer (观夏) has pushed the sachet beyond conventional embroidered pouches. Its 2026 autumn limited edition transformed the format into a rabbit-shaped accessory scented around peach and plum, designed to hang from a bag, car or wardrobe. The format is also appearing as an experience rather than simply a finished product. Xiaohongshu users have documented sachet-making workshops hosted around luxury hospitality and brand events. One post from a Chanel-themed salon at a Shanghai hotel describes guests grinding dried flowers, adding essential oils and filling individual pouches, while another documents a Bulgari event in Guangxi where guests selected aromatic materials and completed partially sewn brocade sachets themselves. A sachet can be merchandise, but it can also function as a craft demonstration, hospitality activation, gifting object or social-media-friendly workshop in which consumers participate in making the product. For luxury and lifestyle brands, that tactile element gives the format an advantage at a moment when experiential retail increasingly asks consumers to do more than browse a shelf. The same diversification is visible further down the supply chain. In Yiwu, sachets once dominated by Dragon Boat imagery are being produced as lotus flowers, butterflies, gourds, coins and miniature traditional hats, then adapted into bag charms, bracelets, car hangings and even hair accessories. Retailers say offline distribution stretches from scenic destinations and temples to cultural companies, wholesalers and supermarkets, while online sales flow through conventional e-commerce, livestreaming and Xiaohongshu content commerce. Home use comprises 19% of surveyed sachet consumption occasions, followed by cars at 17% and offices at 15%. Gifts account for 13% and travel 9%. Natural botanical scents are the most popular fragrance family at 24%, ahead of fruit at 18% and florals at 16%. This puts the sachet closer to contemporary home and personal fragrance than its folk-craft image might suggest. Consumers cited scent preference as the biggest purchase driver at 28%, while improving air quality, relaxation and deodorising together accounted for 65% of stated usage motivations. The embroidery may attract attention, but continued consumption depends increasingly on what is inside the pouch. E-commerce economics Digital distribution has accelerated the category's reinvention: Online channels account for 85% of surveyed purchases, led by Taobao and Tmall at 31%, JD.com at 19%, Pinduoduo at 15% and Douyin e-commerce at 11%. E-commerce platforms are also the largest discovery channel at 32%, followed by social media at 24%. Yet, according to Shangpu’s data, low-priced products generate much of the volume, while a relatively small premium segment punches above its weight in value terms. Products above 60 RMB ($9) represented only 2.7% of unit sales but contributed 21.2% of sales value. Products between 10 RMB ($1.50) and 60 RMB ($9) collectively generated 52.6% of sales value, creating a potentially more attractive commercial middle ground between mass-produced souvenir sachets and labor-intensive heritage pieces. On Tmall, products below 10 RMB ($1.50) generated 60.3% of volume but only 21.6% of sales value, while products above 60 RMB ($9) contributed 21.4% of sales despite accounting for just 3.1% of volume. On Douyin, sub-10 RMB products comprised 60.8% of units but 31.3% of sales value; products above 60 RMB ($9) generated 21% of sales from only 2.2% of volume. JD.com skewed higher still, with products priced above 26 RMB ($4) accounting for 93.8% of units. For heritage producers, that premium pocket is important. Competing directly with Yiwu's industrial supply chain on price is unlikely to sustain hand embroidery or specialist craftsmanship. The opportunity instead lies in convincing consumers that provenance, design and scent formulation justify paying more. Fragrance surge creates a bigger opportunity Sachets are also benefiting from favorable category economics. China's fragrance and home-scent market reached 27.85 billion RMB ($4.16 billion) in 2024, with a five-year compound annual growth rate of 18.9% compared with 7% globally, as per Securities Times. Market penetration remains around 5%, leaving considerable room for new consumers to enter the category. Chinese-style fragrance products are among the faster-moving segments. On Tmall, Chinese incense, incense sticks and sachets were growing by as much as 100%, while flameless fragrance was growing more than 30% and fragrance-related IP collaborations more than 70 percent. The underlying demand has attracted international fragrance houses, established Chinese beauty companies and domestic specialists, such as Le Labo, Documents (闻献), To Summer (观夏), into a market where fragrance is increasingly segmented by usage occasion rather than product format alone. There are signs that the appeal may travel. In the first half of 2026, China's perfume and eau de toilette exports reached 2.5 billion RMB ($374 million), up 31.05% year-on-year, according to customs figures reported by Consumer Daily. A Taobao overseas merchants shared that sales of sachets were rising nearly 20%, while incense holders, plates and stands grew close to 30% That does not yet make the scented sachet a major global fragrance category. It does, however, show that overseas demand for Chinese scent is beginning to encompass the objects and rituals surrounding fragrance, rather than perfume bottles alone. Heritage needs more than heritage The commercial tension is that cultural provenance can generate discovery without necessarily creating loyalty. Shangpu found that 32% of surveyed sachet consumers prioritised branded products, but 31% saw little difference between branded and unbranded alternatives. When consumers changed brands, 34% did so to try a new scent and 28% for a better price. For heritage-led businesses, simply embroidering a different motif or attaching an intangible-cultural-heritage label would not be enough to protect pricing power. Product performance, scent development, recognizable design and year-round use cases become more important as sachets move beyond souvenir shops. The opportunity is nevertheless larger than recreating an ancient object. China’s young fragrance consumer is assembling a vocabulary of scent that can include a 10 RMB ($1.50) sachet hanging from a bag, incense burned before bed, a niche perfume on the dressing table and a fragrance object on a desk. For the businesses trying to modernize the category, the challenge is to make the sachet relevant often enough to escape its festival roots — and distinctive enough that consumers will pay more than souvenir prices.

Why young Chinese are rediscovering the scented sachet

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Why young Chinese are rediscovering the scented sachet

How 2026 welcomed ‘Too Cool’ back